White Hot Darkness
by gothicorca1895
Summary: Was Lord Shen born corrupted, or was the monster inside of him created? Pre-movie. CHAPTER 11 UP!
1. The omen

_A/N - Okay, I said I wasn't going to do any more KFP stories because I got next to zero attention for them, but right now I don't care about that too much because it looks like my book might be getting published oh my god take THAT you lazy idiots who won't review! Plus, I'm not continuing the old trilogy (still no material to do so with) and I think a Shen origins story might get a bit more attention, even if it is cliched. At least it's not a Shen-survived-and-was-found-and-nursed-back-to-health-by-love-interest-OC fic._

_This ties in with my story "If No One Will Listen" and I'm going to figure out a way to brush over the events of that story as briefly as possible here.  
_

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_Part 1: The omen_

The birth of one's first child is a life-changing event for any new parents. Once the expectancy is confirmed, fantasies of the unborn child soon overtake the mind, and expectations begin to grow. Oftentimes parents are certain that their baby will be healthy, be intelligent, and be able to achieve what is required of them. But things don't always go as planned.

Lord Jin and Lady Ah-lam, the Royal Peacocks, were no exceptions to this rule. When they conceived their first egg, celebrations were declared all over Gongmen City, and the young rulers could not have been more delighted. They were not yet ready to think about needing an heir, but they had been eager to become parents for quite some time, and now their wish seemed to be coming true. Soon there would be a new prince or princess to truly unite them as a family, and no sooner had the arrival of the egg been announced than they were dreaming longingly of what a prosperous ruler their little chick would grow up to be.

They gave the egg as much attention as they possible could. They set aside a small room in the Tower of the Sacred Flame and called it the "nursery," where the egg could be kept warm and safe until it hatched, and where the hatchling could be properly treated until it was ready to be taken back to its parents' quarters. They both found themselves distracted during their royal duties and went to visit the nursery frequently, particularly Ah-lam, who for the majority of the day could be found sitting next to the makeshift nest of pillows and blankets, pensively staring at her egg. The incubation of a peacock egg was about a month, which seemed like much too long for her. She could hardly wait until she had a newborn chick, with fuzzy feathers and tiny little talons, to hold in her arms and cradle.

Lord Jin was decidedly less distracted but no less excited than his wife, and her undying enthusiasm made him chuckle lovingly on more than one occasion. One day, after she had spent several minutes fretting to him about not knowing the gender of their baby, he told her that he could think of a treat for her. "We'll send for our court soothsayer," he declared, "and she can tell us whether the chick will be male or female."

Ah-lam was delighted by this idea, and so Jin sent for the soothsayer, a stout female goat who was wise beyond her years. She was almost universally ignored within the palace and always had a wry look on her face, especially so as she trotted into the throne room that day with her bowl clutched in her hooves. "Yes, my lord?" she inquired, bowing down before him.

"Soothsayer, my wife wishes to know if our child will be a boy or a girl," Jin told her. "We wish you to divine the answer to this."

"We shall see if the fates are willing to disclose such information," she answered, and confidently strode up the stairs to the throne. "I will need a feather from each of you."

Jin and Ah-lam looked at each other, slightly puzzled, but they both removed a small feather from their hands after a moment's hesitation.

"Now," said the soothsayer, placing the feathers carefully at the bottom of her bowl. She would have bitten off a chunk from the hem of their robes, which she often did to her other clients, but she was intelligent enough not to try this with her rulers and superiors. "Let us see what the babe's future will hold…"

She tossed a handful of sparkling powder over the feather samples, and thick, colorful smoke rose into the air.

The images in the smoke started off pleasantly enough. A large egg, colored a deep peacock blue, floated above them, surrounded by serene-looking green mist. The soothsayer pursed her lips, staring intently into the depths of the bowl. "I see…that the egg will hatch before its time…"

"What?" cried Ah-lam, just as the mist surrounding the smoky egg turned to a sickly shade of white. White flames leapt up around it, singing the green egg until it too was colorless. The egg's shell shattered into pieces that dissolved into more smoke, and this smoke condensed to form the shape of what was obviously a peacock…but it was still white.

"I see white," stated the soothsayer simply. "And fire. And darkness…"

"This is outrageous!" Jin waved his wings furiously at the images in the smoke, causing them to roil and evaporate. He glared at the soothsayer, his crest bristling. "We did not ask you to spread such falsehoods!"

"This is what the universe has chosen to reveal to us, my lord," she responded, undaunted. "We can make the best use of this foresight…"

"I absolutely refuse to believe it!" he shouted. "You are dismissed. And you're lucky that I don't have you cast out of here this instant!"

After that, Jin and Ah-lam made a point of telling everyone they spoke to about how ridiculous this prediction was. But a seed of doubt had been planted at the bottoms of their souls. Would their chick really hatch prematurely? And what had been meant by "white, and fire, and darkness?" White was the color of death…were the confusing pictures that had formed in the smoke foretelling a bad omen?

The one-month deadline was growing closer and closer, and preparations for the birth of the heir continued. Ah-lam spent more and more time in the nursery now, and she would never admit that she was worried about the possibility of prematurity. She was always fussing about the egg, and the palace physicians constantly tending to it were much too nervous to tell her that she was being a bit overbearing.

There were ten days left, then nine, then eight, then seven. And then, on the sixth day before the birth was expected to occur, the physicians and attendants in their usual posts in the nursery were startled to hear a sudden onset of quiet pecking.

The egg was hatching.

Alarm erupted almost immediately, and soon enough, Jin and Ah-lam came running. They stood over their unborn child, gripping each other fearfully, as what seemed like every physician in the city watched the egg with their breaths held hostage in their chests. The lord and lady both felt weak and faint; they now regretted their immediate dismissal of the soothsayer's prediction, and they watched tiny rifts and cracks gradually appear in the surface of the egg with an uneasy combination of excitement and terror.

All in all, it took several hours for the egg to break completely; clearly the chick inside of it was having quite a bit of trouble. Not one of the people gathered in the nursery dared to leave. At long last, there was a loud snapping sound, and the front of the eggshell fragmented and disintegrated. Egg fluid gushed from the rough-edged hole, and a tiny, limp form collapsed onto the mound of blankets with a soft thump.

Two physicians rushed forward with the intent of cleaning off and bundling up the newborn chick, as did Jin and Ah-lam, desperate for a first glimpse of their child. But everyone – all of the doctors, and most especially the royal peacocks – froze in place when they got their first good look at the baby.

Every one of its feathers was a pale, sickly white.

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_A/N #2 - If you want this story to survive, you better review this time!_


	2. Bad color, bad omen

**White Hot Darkness**

_Part 2: Bad color, bad omen_

The chick sprawled out on the blankets had not yet opened its eyes. Its thin white feathers were drenched in egg fluid, and it was shivering violently. After nearly a minute had passed with everyone staring in horror at it and no one making a motion to pick it up, it began to chirp weakly, instinctively wondering where its parents were. To the physicians, and to Jin and Ah-lam, its chirps sounded faint and hoarse, more like high-pitched coughs than any sound a healthy peacock should make.

At last, the head palace doctor hesitantly scooped up the chick and began to towel it off, acting as if it might shatter if he pressed on it too hard. Jin and Ah-lam were beginning to come to themselves. Ah-lam had both wings pressed against her beak, and Jin demanded shakily, "What is that?"

"Well, sir, it's, er…" stammered the physician, not succeeding too well at swaddling the chick. "It's a little boy…"

"That's not a little boy!" The lord's eyes were filled with slowly dawning mortification. "That's not a peacock! Peafowl are not WHITE!"

"I think he's albino, sir," another physician contributed tentatively. "Hard to know for sure, he hasn't opened his eyes yet…"

The baby was squirming slightly inside his loose wrappings, still trembling fiercely. He opened his tiny gray beak as if to chirp again, but all that came out was a cough – a real cough this time, painful and hacking and jolting to everyone there. He coughed for several minutes longer, and then lay flopped out limply in the doctor's arms, wheezing and sucking wind.

Ah-lam had begun to sway slightly. "Oh, gods…" she gasped. "My baby…something's wrong with him…he's a bad color…"

"He's a bad omen," said Jin, his face darkening.

These were to become the words that would be carried throughout Gongmen City for years to come: _bad color, bad omen, bad color, bad omen…_

Jin was thunderous, refusing to look at the little white bundle that the physician was offering to him – refusing to believe that it was indeed his son. "This cannot be our heir," he declared stiffly. "This cannot by the prince of Gongmen. He is sickly and not worthy of attention. I daresay that he'll die anyway…"

"Jin!" Ah-lam sobbed, clutching his arm. "Don't speak that way! It's not his fault that he's…like this…"

Jin gulped in deep, agitated breaths, looking like he wished that he was dreaming. How could this be happening? How could his son, his own flesh and blood, have turned out to be a…a bad omen? Oh, why had he dismissed the soothsayer so quickly? She had foretold the chick's prematurity, had seen white and fire and darkness. What would this mean for his city?...

"Take care of him," he instructed the physicians coldly. "Give him medicine, or whatever else he needs. My wife and I are taking out leave now."

Ah-lam didn't look so sure about leaving, but she couldn't bear to look at the defected little chick any longer.

"Aren't you going to name him, sir?" asked the head doctor halfheartedly.

Jin clenched his fists. Yes, he'd prepared a name for the chick in the event that it was a boy, but the name that he and Ah-lam had selected now seemed like a cruel joke. Still, they had to call the boy _something_…

"We name him Sheng Li," Jin announced bitterly, "meaning, 'victorious, of high success.'" And with that, he took his wife's wing and walked briskly out of the nursery.

So it was that for the first few days of his life, Prince Sheng Li didn't know the pleasures of comfort or affection.

He spent every moment in his baby bed, swaddled haphazardly, with physicians from all over the city hovering over him. Keeping the young heir alive seemed to be a constant struggle. He still hadn't opened his eyes, and he would fuss constantly despite how weak he was. Every minute he was either coughing, whimpering, or chirping desperately, knowing that the forms always rustling around him weren't his parents and wondering where his mama and baba had gone. In fact they had taken to brooding miserably within the confines of their quarters, unable to stop dwelling on the unfairness of everything.

Sheng Li cried, too, especially when he was being stuck with acupuncture needles, or force-fed milk made bitter by various medicines mixed into it. Feeding him was a chore that took fully two or three hours to complete, and some speculated that he would waste away no matter what they did. But four days after hatching, Sheng Li was still stubbornly clinging to life.

That night, the soothsayer went to see him.

She went very late, when many of the doctors had given up and gone home; those that remained had all fallen asleep, thoroughly exhausted. She crept through the nursery, wanting to see if the child she'd heard so much about was truly as doomed as everyone believed him to be. She approached his bed, caught a glimpse of him…and it seemed to be love at first sight.

The poor little thing was sickly and feverish, utterly breaking her heart. His eyes still weren't open, and he was crying out faintly, as if begging for someone to take care of him. She breathed in sharply, then reached out to smooth his scraggly feathers. "Oh, little one…"

Sheng Li began to whimper as he felt the hoof on his forehead. He was terrified of being touched; of course, that was because he had only ever been poked and prodded and pricked, never soothed or caressed. This invoked further sympathy from the soothsayer, and she gently scooped up his tiny, blanket-wrapped body, cradling him. "There, there…it's okay, I won't hurt you…"

He was squirming a bit now, crying raspily.

"Shh…don't cry…" She held him over her shoulder, tenderly stroking the top of his head. Gradually, his struggles ceased as he realized how good the touch felt, and his head lolled on her shoulder. For the first time in his life, he had stopped fussing.

That was when she noticed that his eyes were open.

He was peering at her curiously through heavy, half-closed eyelids. His irises were crimson red, which would probably send the doctors and his parents into a state of further alarm, but the soothsayer saw this as nothing but confirmation of his albinism; it was nothing to be afraid of. His beak stretched wide open in a yawn, and he blinked up at her sleepily.

She couldn't repress a soft chuckle. Oh, he was _adorable._ "Aww, sleepy baby," she crooned, rubbing him under his chin. He made a quiet, content sort of cooing noise and shut his eyes again, pressing his face into her robes. For the first time since his birth, he was sleeping peacefully.

For the rest of the night, the soothsayer continued to hold Sheng Li, giving him the love that he had craved so much; any time he stirred, she would rub his tummy or scratch his feet, and he would immediately drop off again.

At last, the doctors awakened, and were none too pleased to find her sitting there and looking rather smug. But their attitudes changed when they saw how well she could handle the troublesome chick.

For the next several days, she was the enlisted help of the physicians; she held Sheng Li when it was time for needles, got him to eat and take his medicines, and let him sleep curled up in her arms at night. She absolutely loved the baby boy, and perhaps it was her love that enabled him to start growing stronger. His cough lessened; his fevers began to subside. It looked as if the prince would survive after all.

When Jin and Ah-lam were told of these developments, they didn't know what to feel. On one hand, they wanted to be happy for their son – but there was still that coloration, and the head palace doctor had admitted that he doubted the boy would live past his seventh birthday. If they raised Sheng Li themselves, their hearts would be ripped out when he met his seemingly inevitable early end.

So they made a hard decision: after hearing of her talents with the child, they appointed the soothsayer as his official nanny. While she was somewhat disapproving of her lord and lady's choice, she couldn't deny that she was delighted at the prospect of raising the chick. She had already begun to secretly think of herself as his other mother.

And so, a week and a half after Sheng Li's birth, he was deemed well enough to be liberated from intensive care, and the soothsayer took him back to her quarters – their home.

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_A/N - Five whole reviews last chapter? Is it pathetic that I'm excited about that? Because I am. Keep it up, guys!_


	3. Affection is the key

**White Hot Darkness**

_Part 3: Affection is the key_

Prince Sheng Li was a decidedly well-behaved infant, or at least, as well-behaved as a weak, sickly hatchling could be. By the time he was taken out of intensive care, he was already highly attached to his new nanny, and no one else. Even his confused, innocent eyes could see that the soothsayer was the only one who cared for him, who comforted him and rocked him and fed him and was there for him. Everyone else was a meanie who was always sticking him with needles and making him eat nasty-tasting things. But his Nana took care of him, and even at a week and a half old, he was able to recognize that.

The soothsayer felt as if she were the new parent now, always thinking about the baby and what was best for him, putting her own life – what little there existed of it – on hold. Sheng Li became her number one priority. He was terrified of strangers, so she was careful to keep him isolated in the quarters they now shared; he was sick often, so she made sure that he swallowed an herbal supplement at least once a day, and she always made his baths hot and fast. Most of all, she gave him affection, which she deemed was what he really needed. After all, he was just a newborn, very needy and frightened of being away from her. It was her job to be there for him when he awoke crying and coughing in the night, or suddenly started running a fever in the middle of the day. And even though she had never cared for a child before, she turned out to be very, very good at it.

She found the prediction that he would not live past his seventh birthday altogether unsatisfactory, and tried her hardest to conjure up a prediction of her own. She spent many sleepless nights sitting cross-legged on her bed mat, staring into the depths of her bowl with a small fuzzy feather from the young prince lying at the bottom. The results of these attempts to divine Sheng Li's future were always the same: smoke would rise from the bowl and produce a hazy image of a fully-grown white peacock. After this had happened every day for a week, she was satisfied that this meant that he would live on until adulthood, although she did not inform Jin and Ah-lam of this yet.

Being as concerned for her chick's health as she was now, she had an idea about how to help him. She had a friend who lived in a village outside of Gongmen, a panda named Biming. Biming was an extremely skilled healer, and she might know how to prolong the life of a sickly, premature peachick. So, with the permission of her lord and lady, the soothsayer sent a message out to the panda village, and Biming accepted the offer and set out for the palace.

Back then, Biming had been a very young woman, unmarried, who was only beginning to gain fame for her healing skills. Jin and Ah-lam were very curious to meet her. She was a peasant, but they would never have held that against her; they were temperate rulers, concerned for the well-being of their citizens. So when she arrived at the Tower of the Sacred Flame for the first time, they immediately had her directed to the throne room.

Their first glimpse of her as she bowed before the throne was one that they would never forget. Her appearance would never change in all the time that they would know her: she was large and portly (which was to be expected; she was a giant panda, after all) with a gray bun tied firmly at the back of her head, between her ears; she was dressed in a threadbare brown robe with a long dark sash; and she had the most beautiful, friendly, clear green eyes. Maybe that was appropriate, since Biming meant "clarity of jade."

Jin and Ah-lam were intrigued as she bowed and called up to them cordially, "Good morning, my lord, my lady."

Jin cleared his throat and responded, "Good afternoon, Lady Biming."

"Oh, you don't have to call me that," she said, blushing.

The lord shrugged; he was still gazing at her inquiringly. "So, our court soothsayer has informed us that you may be able to help our newborn son, who suffers from a certain…condition."

"Premature immune system and albinism." Biming nodded. "Min Yun told me."

Ah-lam's brow furrowed in confusion at the name; she didn't realize that "Min Yun" was actually the name of the soothsayer. Fortunately, Jin did.

"Yes, he seems to be sick nearly all of the time, and has a rather…unusual coloration." Jin cleared his throat. "The soothsayer has assured us that you have experience in matters like this…"

"If by 'matters like this' you mean 'caring for young children' then yes, I have plenty of experience," Biming assured him.

"That's good to hear. You have children of your own, then?"

"No…not yet." Her eyes flickered wistfully. "I am my village's healer, though, so I deal with babies all the time. This shouldn't be too much trouble at all."

"Thank you very much, Lady Biming." Jin lowered himself back into his throne, while she once again blushed at the use of this unnecessary honorific title. "We thank you, and the soothsayer thanks you. After all, she's his nanny, so she's just as concerned about him as we are…"

"As I said, it's no trouble." Biming smiled at them and nodded, but as she exited the throne room, she couldn't help but feel that there was something rather odd about the whole situation.

The soothsayer was delighted about meeting up with her old friend again; they hadn't seen each other since the soothsayer had been inducted at the Tower of the Sacred Flame. They spent a full five minutes in which each gushed over how well the other was doing, chatting and laughing girlishly, until Biming finally said, "Well, enough about us, Min Yun – where's the baby?"

Sheng Li had been laid down for a nap before the panda's arrival, but the sound of an unfamiliar voice had awakened him. He wasn't fussing, but his eyes were open now and he was looking around suspiciously, knowing that someone unknown was near…not an easy thing to do, since he still could only barely support his own head.

The soothsayer went over and scooped him up gently, kissing his forehead, and brought him over to where Biming could see him. "Here he is. Prince Sheng Li…"

"Oh, he's so adorable!" Biming gasped, tilting up with chin with one of her enormous yet steady hands. "Hello there, cutie pie! Oh, you're so cute I could just eat you up!"

Sheng Li began to tremble, letting out a few chirps of distress.

"He's not very good with strangers, I'm afraid," the soothsayer explained apologetically, bringing the chick back into the secluded comfort of her arms. "Actually, he's terrified of anyone that isn't me. We haven't tried him with his parents yet, not sure what he'll think of them…"

Biming frowned. "Hold on. What do you mean, you haven't tried him with his parents yet?"

"They haven't been to see him since his birth." Annoyance flickered across the soothsayer's features for a moment, until she quickly added, "I'm sure you can understand that this has come as a shock to them. I mean, they were excited to have their first child as well as an heir to the throne, and their son turned out to be an albino…"

Biming shook her head. "Perhaps it's because I'm used to babies being white, but I can't see what the big deal is. Oh, well. Let's get down to business…"

She unpacked her medical supplies, sorting out certain herbs and a set of acupuncture needles, while the soothsayer sat down on the ground and held Sheng Li firmly in her lap. Sensing that dreaded treatment was coming, he squirmed and let out a few quiet peeps of alarm. His nanny hushed him, wrapping her arms around his waist.

"I'm sorry about this in advance, sweetheart," said Biming, and she plunged the first needle into his arm.

Apparently, Sheng Li picked that moment to learn how to shriek at the top of his tiny little lungs, because the soothsayer had never heard him scream so loudly before. The cry he released was more like a desperate, high-pitched wail, and he thrashed in the arms that restrained him, desperately trying to hide himself in absolute fear. The soothsayer immediately picked him up and hushed him, murmuring, "Oh, baby, shhh, shhhhh…it's okay, Nana's got you, Nana's here…" Biming had blanched, and she was sputtering out apologies for hitting the wrong nerve point; at the last moment, his oversized sleeve had fallen over his arm, obscuring her view.

"It's all right, Biming," the soothsayer assured her. "An understandable mistake." Indeed, all of Sheng Li's robes were much too big for him. They had been tailored for a normal-sized chick before he had even hatched.

At last, she had managed to comfort the baby, and he lay against her weakly, coughing now and then. He was shivering, pressing his face into her robes as if trying to hide from the evil healer.

"Aww, isn't that sweet," Biming cooed. "He knows who his mama is."

"Biming!" scolded the soothsayer. "I'm not his 'mama.' I'm his Nana. The sooner he learns that, the better."

"It's still sweet. He's a little sweetheart." Biming sighed. "Now, back to the treatment…"

One hour of struggling, crying, and coughing later, Sheng Li was being fed warm milk to get the taste of medicine powders out of his mouth, keeping his tearstained face buried in his nanny's robes. Every so often his damp red eyes would flicker to Biming, who was packing up her supplies, and she had the sense that he was glaring hurtfully at her.

"It's okay now, baby," the soothsayer crooned, carefully letting him suckle from a soaked cloth. He whimpered, pushing the rag out of his beak. "Are you done? All right, little one, you sleep now." She held him over her shoulder, rubbing his back, and he cuddled into her sleepily.

"I do feel bad about making him so miserable," said Biming as she stood up, "but I think if we do this once or twice a week, his life expectancy should be prolonged significantly. I'm sure he'll hate me for years after this." She chuckled, not realizing how right she would turn out to be.

"Thank you so much." The soothsayer was stroking her baby's head, and his eyelids were drooping. "I'm sure he'll appreciate this someday."

"No problem." Biming beamed at them as she headed for the door. "When I have my own children someday, I hope my babies are just as cute as him."

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_A/N - Aaaaand enter Lady Biming! Those of you who have read Keeping a Secret know who she is. This is how she met Shen in the first place._

_In other news...HOLY CRAP 13 REVIEWS FOR 2 CHAPTERS ASDFGHJKL. I love you guys. Please, please keep it up!_


	4. The parents

**White Hot Darkness**

_Part 4: The parents_

Time passed; Sheng Li grew older; while he was still sick frequently and quite undersized for his age, he was growing nonetheless. It took him longer than it would have taken most other babies to learn how to sit up unsupported, to be able to pull himself up, to crawl. But what he lacked in physical prowess, he more than made up for with his quickly advancing mind.

The soothsayer noticed his developing intelligence as she continued to care for him. By the time he was four months old, she was certain that he understood a fair amount of the words that were being spoken to him. By the time he was five and a half months old, he was using certain babbling sounds or chirps in order to communicate different things, even though he couldn't properly speak yet. It was as if he and his nanny were developing their own little code.

Even when he wasn't outwardly showing signs of abnormally high aptitude, Sheng Li was prone to staring at things as if he was concentrating very hard on them. He nearly always looked as if he were thinking deeply about something. As a result, the soothsayer began to affectionately call him _Shen_, an abbreviation of his name that meant "deep thought." In time, this nickname was to stick.

One day, when Shen was seven months old, he was calling to her and trying to get her attention when he suddenly blurted out, "Na!" The soothsayer was shocked by this, especially when he reached out towards her and continued to repeat insistently, "Na! Na!" Maybe it wasn't technically a full word, but the fact that he was trying to say "Nana" was perfectly clear.

She was very proud of her precocious little chick, even if he wasn't making headway in the one area where he sorely needed it – social interaction. The only person he was ever comfortable with was her. He was deathly afraid of Lady Biming, who stopped by twice a week to give him medicine and injections, and even the servants made him nervous. How would this fare when he was older and needed to go out into the world and make friends? And what about his parents? Would he be frightened of them, when he finally saw them?

The soothsayer didn't want to wait around and find out. Lord Jin and Lady Ah-lam had not been to see the prince since his birth, and it had been seven months now. The time was ripe for them to see how well he was doing; they couldn't avoid it anymore.

And so, Shen was nearly eight months old when he truly met his parents for the first time.

For Jin and Ah-lam, the fact that their son had his certain…_condition_…was impossible for them to forget. Even if they never dealt with the boy themselves, they were always aware of the fact that he was there, in the palace, being cared for by someone who wasn't them. They could not progress as if he'd never been born; the fact that something was wrong with him did not erase his existence, and they didn't really want it to. They simply wished that Sheng Li had been born healthy and normal, and the fact that he hadn't been made them too fearful to try for another child.

When the soothsayer informed them of his budding intelligence, and that it was a perfect time for them to come and see him, they were both relieved and uncertain. They wanted to meet their son when he wasn't feverish and coughing his lungs out, of course, but dealing with him would be a new experience. Of course they were nervous about it. Still, there was something pathetic about the fact that they lived well within the vicinity of their son, and yet had never seen him.

And so, of course, they went.

They had never been to the soothsayer's quarters before, and they now saw that she had clearly devoted herself to making it suitable for her baby over the past few months. Every bit of clutter had been cleared away in preparation for the arrival of the royal peafowl, but Jin and Ah-lam still spotted an old produce crate filled with toys in one corner, and the stacks of herbs used for supplements and medicines laid out on the kitchen counter. But these details were soon thrust into their peripheral vision as the soothsayer herself came out to greet them.

"My lord, my lady, welcome," she said, bowing respectfully. "I'm glad that you could join us. Shen is just in the bedroom – "

"Shen?" repeated Jin, his long eyebrows arching.

"Oh." She smiled sheepishly. "That's what I've been calling Sheng Li. It's a term of endearment, you see. I call him that because…well, you'll see. Follow me…"

Shen was sitting on his own little bed in the bedroom, concentrating very hard on gnawing on a beanbag ball. When he saw the soothsayer, a smile spread across his tiny gray beak. "Na!" he exclaimed happily.

"Hello there, baby," she crooned, scooping him up as he held out his wings to her. She tickled his tummy a bit, and he giggled, nuzzling against her contentedly.

Jin and Ah-lam, who had been watching from the doorway, now cautiously came forward. When Shen noticed them, he pointed at them and chirped questioningly to his nanny. She told him, "That's your mama and baba, dear heart. They've come to see you."

Shen tilted his head at them, his crimson eyes shining with curiosity. The soothsayer remarked, "I think he understands that you're like him."

"But we're not like him," said Jin. "He is a bad color. We are not."

She frowned. "He's not a bad color, my lord…"

"He's cute," Ah-lam spoke up shakily, coming forward. "May I hold him?"

"You don't have to ask, my lady. He's your son, after all…"

Shen did not show any alarm as he was passed off to his mother. He chirped up at her softly as she took him into her wings. She didn't understand him, of course but she said gently, "Hello, Sheng Li. Do you know who I am? I'm your mama…"

He considered this for a moment, then announced, "Mmma!"

"Yes, that's right!" Ah-lam couldn't hide how impressed she was at this.

"Ma!" Shen began to insistently nudge her neck and chin, pecking at her feathers gently. He gazed up at her expectantly.

"Um…" Ah-lam looked uncertain. "What is he…"

"He wants attention," explained the soothsayer calmly. "He loves getting affection. Rub or scratch his tummy; that's his favorite."

A bit awkwardly, Ah-lam began to move her hand over the baby's stomach. He cooed blissfully, snuggling into her. She smiled. "Oh, you're such a cute baby, aren't you…why don't you hold him, Jin?"

"No, thank you," responded Jin stiffly, as if he was afraid that albinism was contagious.

"Are…are you sure?" Ah-lam was stroking the top of Shen's head now, and he was leaning against her shoulder, as a cozy as a cat curled up in a sunny window. "I mean, look at him, he's really very sweet…"

Jin's crest bristled. "Ah-lam," he hissed, "may I remind you that your 'sweet baby' has less than seven years to live?"

If a pin had dropped at that moment, it would have sounded louder than a fireworks show within the ringing silence that followed.

Abruptly and wordlessly, Ah-lam handed Shen back to the soothsayer. He opened his eyes and looked around, confused and hurt, wondering where his mother had gone. The soothsayer gripped her child firmly, glaring at Jin.

"Don't you dare look at me like that," Jin snapped at her. "We never should have come here. "No good can come out of associating with this…this bad omen!"

"He's your son!" she cried.

"He is a MISTAKE!"

"Ba?" asked Shen softly, gazing at his father through round red eyes.

Jin's eyes widened and he stared at his son as if the chick was an alien from another planet that had suddenly done something with a surprising amount of humanity. Then, without a word, he seized his wife's arm and dragged her out of the room.

That night, the soothsayer sat cradling Shen in her lap. She was unable to prevent the tears from rolling down her cheeks. "Na?" said Shen, knowing that she was sad and not understanding why.

"Your parents may not want you, my dear…they may think of you as a bad omen…" She clutched him firmly. "But I will always care for you.

"Know this, my little Shen…you will always be loved."

* * *

_A/N - *sigh* I jinxed myself last time, didn't I? Here I was, so excited about getting so many reviews, and how many did I get for my last chapter? Two. That is unacceptable. Therefore, you were punished by not getting a chapter yesterday._

_Please get used to the fact that I normally update this story every day. And remember - if you don't review, I will cancel it._


	5. On death's door

**White Hot Darkness**

_Part 5: On death's door_

Shen's first birthday came and went, and his parents did not come to visit him.

It was a long time before he learned how to stand, and even longer before he figured out how to walk. Once he had gotten the hang of it, though, there was no keeping him still. The soothsayer would try to tell him to stay in a room for two minutes, but as soon as she left he would be there, tottering behind her unsteadily on wire-thin, shaky legs. He was always in her shadow, always clinging to her robes and stuck to her like glue. But he never objected to being picked up, especially when it meant that he was going to be given affectionate caresses. If nothing else, Shen loved to be loved.

As for his speech, he was a regular chatterbox by the time he was eighteen months old. He enunciated rather well for someone of his age; of course, with a tongue still more adept at baby talk, his words were often garbled or slurred. Anytime he heard a new word, he would ask, "Nana, whazzat mean?" It became his favorite sentence, and he loved to show off with it.

He was still being given bi-weekly visits from Biming, and he only seemed to put up more and more of a fuss about this as he got older. He detested the female panda, and all of her icky medicines and pointy needles. She apologized to him more than once, expressing her wishes that there were more painless ways of dealing with illness, but if Shen understood that she was sorry he never let on.

When his second birthday began fast approaching and his parents had still not made a single effort to see him again, the soothsayer had a rare moment of short-temperedness. She wanted to go out into Gongmen City to find him an extra-special birthday present, and she still didn't think that her baby was ready to go out into the big wide world. Therefore, she made arrangements for his parents to look after him for a couple of hours. They were uncertain, but neither of them really wanted to disagree.

To say that Lord Jin felt bad about what he had said during his only visit to his son would have been a vast understatement. It wasn't as if Jin didn't want his son. Actually, the fact that the boy was different wouldn't have bothered him as much as it did if it wasn't for the part about the short life expectancy. He and Ah-lam didn't want the pain that would befall them in five years or less if they truly interacted with Sheng Li. Even though some days all they truly wanted was to spend time with their child, they constantly reminded themselves that their decision had been for the best…despite their increasing doubts of whether or not that was really true.

And so, three days before Shen's second birthday, the soothsayer dropped him off in the throne room with a ball, a caterpillar toy, and a kiss goodbye. When she left, he called, "Nana! Nana!" after her for several minutes, but thankfully, he didn't cry. His parents wouldn't have known what to do with him if he had.

They had made sure that their afternoon was free of any major meetings with advisors or ambassadors beforehand, so no one came to disturb the lord and lady as they stood stiffly for several minutes, watching as Shen toddled about the throne room, sometimes pouncing on his ball or dragging the caterpillar behind him. He would occasionally chirp or mutter for no apparent reason, and it was some time before he noticed them.

Jin felt his heart twist when he spotted the little chick crouched at the bottom of the stairs, gazing up at his father's throne. "Baba!" he babbled.

"Er, yes," Jin stammered. "I am your baba…"

Shen was uncertainly surveying the stairs, those things that he had never really gotten the hang of climbing. If the soothsayer had been there, he would have known that he wanted to go up and see his father, but neither of his parents was able to read into the subtle hints in his eyes and movements. He got down on his knees and began to crawl towards the throne.

"Um, son…" Jin stood up slowly, his concern growing. "Are you meant to be doing – "

But it was too late. Shen was tipping backwards, his talons skidding on the slick marble surface as he desperately scrabbled for purchase. "Baba! Baba!" he cried out between his chirps of alarm!"

Jin lunged forward, his train fanning out in an instinctive reaction to the adrenaline flooding his veins, and seized his son's hands. He pulled Shen awkwardly into his arms, and for a moment he stood there like that, clutching the frightened little bundle of a baby. Then, hesitantly, he set Shen on his feet.

Shen trembled, his eyes darting around the room. Then, without warning, he burst into tears.

Ah-lam rushed forward immediately, taking the boy into her wings and trying to hush him before glaring up at her husband. "Jin," she said sharply.

"Oh, what?" Jin snapped. "What have I done wrong now? Besides save the child from falling, that is!"

"Would it kill you to hold him for a moment? By the gods, you act as if he were already dead!"

Jin released a short, huffing breath.

"Why don't you take him outside for a few minutes?" she suggested, nodding towards the sniffling peachick. "I'm sure he'd love to spend some time with his baba."

Jin wasn't certain how he felt about this, but he submitted, and he reluctantly took Shen's hand as the two of them headed towards the courtyard. Shen was back to chattering blissfully, and he seemed to be quite fascinated by the elder peacock's fan tail. He darted behind Jin in order to stroke it in awe, marveling at the colors, the length, the iridescent eye-spots. "Baba haff pwitty feh-vuws," he declared.

Jin couldn't help but smile slightly. "You like them, do you? All peacocks grow tails like that."

Shen looked behind him as if searching for a trace of his own tail, but all he saw was his enormous robe dragging on the floor, which he promptly stumbled over.

"You're silly," Jin chuckled as he righted his son. "You don't have long feathers yet. You'll get them when you're all…" His voice faded, and he found himself unable to say "grown up."

Sheng Li was never going to grow up…

When they arrived at the courtyard, they discovered that the overcast sky and damp, heavy air that had formed earlier in the day had turned to a steady drizzle of rain. Jin frowned, preparing to turn around and go back inside…

But Shen had already tottered out into the rain, giggling as he raised his arms up towards the shower. He jumped up and down as best he could on the squishy ground, adoring the feel of the mud on his bare feet. "Son!" called Jin. "Come back here – you're not supposed to be out in the rain!"

Shen looked over at his father. "Wanna pway," he said sadly.

Jin breathed out. Shen did look like he was having an awful lot of fun. Well, perhaps five minutes wouldn't hurt…

So Shen was permitted to play in the rain for five minutes, and then he was taken inside and thoroughly toweled off. When the soothsayer came to pick him up, she never knew that it had happened. But she did notice that he seemed rather listless that night, and put him to bed early.

When Shen woke up in the morning, he was coughing and had a fever. His nanny, unsurprised, sent for the palace physician and received the usual stack of medicines. She fed them to her chick and kept him in bed, hoping that he would at least be feeling better by his birthday.

His birthday passed, and he was no better. A few more days passed, and he was worse.

By now, the soothsayer was extremely concerned. Not one of the usual medicines was easing his symptoms; his coughs were thick and raspy, and he often sounded like he was choking for several minutes on end. His fevers were skyrocketing nearly all of the time, never once breaking. He had cried at first, but eventually he grew too weak to, and spent his days and nights whimpering in pain. She worked tirelessly trying to soothe him and make him more comfortable, but nothing she did had any effect. Finally, when he had been ill and miserable for a week and a half, she sent for Biming.

Biming, who was quickly becoming the preferred healer around the Tower of the Sacred Flame, arrived in the morning to find that Shen was apparently deeply asleep. The soothsayer explained that he hadn't properly slept in several days, and had pretty much passed out from exhaustion the night before. But as Biming set to work on him, and jostling him and even pricking him with needles didn't cause him to stir one iota, she was forced to draw another conclusion.

"I hate to tell you this, Min Yun," she started shakily, turning to her friend with an expression of utmost fear on her face, "but little Shen is not asleep…he's comatose."

Within the next twenty-four hours, things went from bad to worse very, very quickly.

The soothsayer refused to leave her baby's side for any reason, and she was almost always gripping his hand, softly pleading for him to wake up. Biming worked steadily, despite her fretful admittances that there wasn't much that she could do, and at last a servant sent for Jin and Ah-lam. When they heard that their son might be on his deathbed, they couldn't come fast enough.

The parents were in a sorry state when they arrived. Ah-lam was sobbing with her face pressed against Jin's long neck, and Jin looked, if possibly, even worse. His face was gaunt and vacant. He knew why Shen was so sick, and it made the furthermost depths of his heart ache horribly…

"It's my fault," he muttered.

"Wh-what do you mean, my lord?" managed the soothsayer. She was crouched beside Shen's bed mat; her eyes were red-rimmed, and there were visible tear tracks in the fur on her cheeks.

"When we were watching him…I let him play in the rain…" Jin shut his eyes in remorse, his throat pulsating with repressed tears. "It's…my fault…"

Ah-lam and the soothsayer stared at him in mortification.

Jin knelt beside his son's bed mat, an uncontrollable sob bursting through his beak. "Oh, son, I'm so sorry…" he gasped, pressing his face into his wings. "I didn't mean to…I didn't know…oh, I'm so, so sorry…"

He didn't reach out and touch the boy, but only because he felt that he didn't deserve it. He was an awful father, there was no doubting that now. He was so concerned with being upright that he hadn't even held his own child, and he had been foolish enough to let a sickly albino chick, a chick with that dreaded _condition_, out into the rain. Oh, what had he been thinking…he was a miserable excuse for a father…

Jin and Ah-lam did not stay long, and once they left they locked themselves into their chambers, resigning themselves to hear the inevitable news of Sheng Li's death.

The soothsayer did not sleep, didn't even try to. Biming continued to do as much as she could, working until nearly dawn until she finally nodded off, and the soothsayer let her. It gave her the opportunity to lift her poor little chick into her arms, rocking him and cradling him and nuzzling him, quietly begging her baby not to leave her. She sat down on in the corner, clutching tightly to the feverish little body in her lap, and finally cried herself to sleep, doubting whether or not Shen would still be breathing when she awoke.

Biming finally came to late in the morning, and when she saw the soothsayer and Shen curled up in the corner together, she couldn't help but sigh and wipe tears from her eyes. She approached them, planning to check the baby's vital signs…which was when she noticed his tiny red eyes peering at her in irritation.

"Miz B," he said, which was what he called her since he couldn't pronounce her name at his age. "Nana's squishin' me."

* * *

_A/N - It amused me to see how many people reviewed last chapter by saying, "Lord Jin is a jerk." So I decided that this chapter, it was necessary to show that he wasn't a TOTAL jerk...just sort of a jerk. Right._

_And...I GOT 10 NEW REVIEWS IN ONE CHAPTER ASDFGHJKL. I need to threaten to end this more often, don't I? So please keep reviewing, because seriously, I will cancel the fic if no one's interested. So show me your interest if you want it to stick around._


	6. Aftermath

**White Hot Darkness**

_Part 6: Aftermath_

If the soothsayer had thought that she was crying hard when Shen had fallen into his coma, it was nothing compared to how hard she cried when she woke up that morning and saw him peering up at her from her arms. She hugged him so tightly that the baby was soon squirming in her arms, insistently chirping, "Nana squishin' me!"

Lady Biming only managed to pry the child away when she managed to convince her old friend that the peachick wasn't out of the woods yet; after all, no one could fall into a coma and just become magically better overnight. Indeed, Shen was still feverish, still coughing, and still very weak. Still, it looked like he was going to survive.

The soothsayer went to her room in order to wash her face and generally compose herself again while Shen was subjected to a long round of acupuncture needles and medications. She forced herself to be calm as she listened to his hoarse shrieks of pain and protest; she knew that Biming was doing him more good than harm, even if all she wanted to do was rush back out and snatch her baby back, and tell him that it was okay, that Nana was there for him…

At last, she could take it no longer, and apparently neither cold Biming, because the panda didn't even protest as Shen was lifted into his nanny's arms. The boy was sniffling, and he pressed his little feverish face into the soothsayer's many-layered robes. She kissed his forehead shakily. "Don't you ever scare your Nana like that again, little one…"

"It looks like our little Shen is a fighter," Biming remarked. "I don't believe I've ever seen a child with more will to live."

The soothsayer smiled tearfully, trying not to clutch to her chick too tightly. Shen had cuddled up to her and was cooing blissfully. "He's…he's something, all right."

"I'm surprised you were so worried, Min Yun," Biming started hesitantly, wringing her hands a bit. "Not that you don't have every right to be frightened for your child, of course – but didn't you tell me that you predicted he'll survive until adulthood?"

The goat opened her mouth, then shut it.

"I'm sorry if that comes off as cruel," Biming added quickly. "I was only wondering…"

"No, no, you're right…" The soothsayer breathed out shakily. "It's just…what I do is not an exact science, Biming, you know that…"

"I don't pretend to understand your talent. I imagine it must be very complicated. Still, you need to have faith in yourself…and in little Shen." Biming smiled. "I think he'll make it if you believe that he can."

The soothsayer looked down at the little bundle of white feathers and fluff tucked into her arms, and he gazed at her through round crimson eyes. He was sucking on the sleeve of his oversized robe, a self-pacifying habit that he had developed, and was gripping a fold of her clothing with his other hand. His body was still too warm, and his breathing still sounded uncomfortably raspy, but all that mattered to her was that he was breathing at all.

"Nana," he said.

"Nana's here." She instinctively held him closer, cradling him protectively. His head lolled against her chest sleepily. "I love you, baby…"

"L…laaaav…Nana," Shen tried, before nodding off immediately with the suddenness that all little children are prone to and leaving his nanny beaming.

…

The soothsayer was well aware that she should probably inform Jin and Ah-lam of her foretelling that their son would live on past the prediction that the doctors had made, but she did not, for the simple reason that she was rather irritated with them. They had forced Shen off on her so that they didn't have to love him, and thus wouldn't have to cope with the pain that would come if he died prematurely. He was their own son; they should love him no matter what, and yet they never visited him unless she pressed them to. They hadn't even come to see him after hearing that he'd come out of his coma! And yet there was an element of guilt to her thinking as well; she had made the prediction that had started them on this 'bad omen' tangent, after all…

But she could not help what she had seen, she told herself. And her lord and lady would have reacted badly anyway when Shen hatched prematurely and revealed his white coloration. Still, she couldn't help but wonder why she was called a SOOTHsayer when, more often than not, she only brought unrest and anxiety…

It took Shen nearly a month to recover from his illness. He seemed to grow even closer to her – if that was at all possible – and also began to detest Biming even more. The healer, never dissuaded, was pleased to note that he was growing stronger. Perhaps soon, there would be no more need for her weekly treatments, and the child wouldn't hate her so much anymore.

During the long resting period of his healing, the soothsayer began to tell Shen stories – at first from her head, but eventually she ran out of memorized tales and began to consult the scrolls of the palace library for inspiration. She took these scrolls home, and when Shen showed interest in the carefully inscribed kanji lettering adorning the papers, she figured that it wouldn't hurt to teach him how to read. Why not? He was already so precocious in so many other ways…

Shen took to the lessons well. He had already loved to learn new words and show off his knowledge to the few people who would listen to him, so the idea of all those pretty symbols unlocking a whole new world of language to him was rather fascinating. His Nana taught him to recognize a small assortment of characters and was pleased when he was able to parrot simple sentences back at her, even if his pronunciations were still rather garbled.

She also brought him inks and paints and brushes and paper, and he was delighted, beginning his artistic endeavors by scribbling unrecognizable black masses on every blank scroll he could find (and also on a few things he wasn't supposed to, like the table and the wall; he got a long time-out for that). The soothsayer let him "free draw" for a couple of days before beginning to guide his little wing into forming the strokes of the kanji he was learning. This took longer for him to get the hang of, much to his frustration, but gradually he was able to produce shaky, smudged, and somewhat recognizable letters.

When his cough at last grudgingly retreated, Shen was able to go outside again, although never, ever, EVER in the rain. He loved to play over by the well or the flower beds, usually with his ball in tow. But one day, when he headed out to the courtyard, he found that his usual play spot was occupied.

Three small wolf cubs, the children of the guards, were romping through the gardens. Two of them looked to be a few years older than Shen, at least five or six, but the other was closer to the peachick toddler's age. Of course, they were all much, much bigger than him.

"Hey, look!" called one, pointing a developing claw at Shen. "It's the little prince."

Shen backed up, clutching his ball; he didn't like the looks of the wolves' teeth and fingers. They looked very sharp and pointy.

The second cub jeered, "He's so puny! No wonder they call him a bad omen!"

Shen released an involuntary, alarmed chirp. He glanced over his shoulder quickly. The soothsayer was several yards away, keeping a watchful eye on him. Did she think he was going to play with these children? Then again, she did want him to get over his fear of strangers, but…

The two bigger cubs were continuing to shout nasty things at him. He didn't understand everything, but he knew he was being picked on.

"Look at him! Even a baby should be bigger 'n that!

"And his feathers! They're all…white!"

"Shouldn't they be blue or somethin'?"

"He's a bad color!"

"He's a bad omen!"

_Bad color, bad omen, bad color, bad omen…_

Those words had become a terrible chant, although whether it was borne on their lips or simply in the young boy's head, he couldn't figure out. He burst into tears and fled, running for his Nana, burying his face into the secluded comfort of her arms.

Other children were bad. Other children were scary. It would be years before he would try to interact with them again.

But just before he'd run off, he had thought that he'd seen the littlest wolf pup, who had remained silent the entire time, give him a sympathetic glance…

* * *

_A/N - Thanks so much for your patience, guys! Here's the REAL chapter 6! I'm no longer drugged to high heaven with the post-surgery meds they gave me, so I can get back to this story!_

_As always...reviews reviews reviews! I love your reviews! They are the kindling that keeps this story burning! Don't let the flame go out and review me, please!_


	7. The worst birthday

_A/N - Woops...heh, heh. Did I take a really inexcusably long leave of absence from this story? Yeah...sorry, guys. My bad._

_Some of you may know that I left because I was writing and finishing two other stories, "A Great Escape" and "The Song of Winter." However, I was always intending to come back and finish this one. It was by far my most popular in terms of reviews per chapter...I hope I haven't lost all my readers from being gone for so long..._

* * *

**White Hot Darkness**

_Part 7: The worst birthday_

"Nana, I know what I want for my birthday."

The soothsayer looked up from the dish of plums and rice she was preparing, studying the chick framed in the kitchen doorway. She couldn't help but smile whenever she saw Shen. He was still baby-sized, easy to hold and cradle; his robes continued to dwarf him by comparison. Recently, he had started to develop the beginnings of a crest, and three oversized feathers now sprouted from the back of his head. And, of course, you'd be hard-pressed to find a more well-spoken four year old anywhere.

No…five-year-old, she reminded herself. He was only a few days away from his fifth birthday. And when she'd asked him what kind of a present he wanted, he had stared doubtfully at his stacks of toys and games. He already had every material possession he could possibly desire; whenever the soothsayer chided Jin and Ah-lam about never spending time with their son, they would send him another toy, as if that would make up for the lack of parental love and affection. Since then, he had been thinking about what kind of a gift he wanted…and now he apparently had an idea.

"Say the word and I'll get it for you, my prince," she beamed, trotting over to him. "After all, turning five is a very special occasion…"

Shen sucked in a deep breath. "May I have a birthday party?"

The soothsayer's smile faltered.

"Um…" she flailed. "Shen, darling…maybe that's not such a good…"

"I knew it," he said sourly, scowling. His eyes dropped to the floor, and his head feathers lowered bitterly. "I knew you'd say no."

"I didn't say 'no,' dear," she corrected, forcing her voice to remain steady. "All I meant was, who would you invite? You don't have any…"

"…friends," Shen finished quietly. "I don't have any friends."

"I didn't say – "

"You were thinking it!" He was bristling now, his round red eyes narrowing.

The soothsayer gazed at him steadily. "Don't you raise your voice to be, young man…"

Shen hitched up the hem of his enormous robe and tore out of the kitchen, more or less stumbling into the bedroom that the two of them shared. The door clicked quietly shut behind him; he didn't yet have the strength to slam it.

Prince Sheng Li was weak. He knew that, and it frustrated him to no end. Over the past few months, he had begun to feel an emotion that very few children of his age ever experienced: dissatisfaction, accompanied by an unusually developed sense of self-awareness. When he looked through the grand palace windows, out into Gongmen City, he was always aware that amidst the hustle and bustle in the streets, children were playing…running and jumping and shouting, the way he had never been able to. The restraints of constant poor health were unknown to them; they had never been weighted down by sparse strength or frail lungs, had never felt the chains of those ailments tugging them back. Shen might have been precocious, but he still wanted to play and have fun – with other children, and he couldn't.

He _tried _to. Sometimes when he saw the antelope children (the offspring of the palace servants) gathering in groups in order to partake in peaceful games, he was so tempted to scurry up to them and ask to join. But then they would catch sight of him and begin to snicker nastily, and he wouldn't do anything, except hang his head and shuffle off despondently. It was even worse with the guard children; maybe some of them weren't much more than puppies, but they were still _wolves_, and they frightened him. They were a lot nastier than the servant kids, too.

But worst of all was when he caught a glimpse of his parents.

There was Lord Jin – strong, bold, authoritative, a natural leader. He never cried or showed weakness, and always seemed calm and collected, no matter what happened. He was strong and lithe, and he probably could have been a great kung fu master were it not for the fact that he had distinctly neglected his martial arts studies in his youth. He could defend himself perfectly well, but when a conflict needed to be stamped out, he left it to his soldiers. He had many other royal activities to engage in - such as governing his subjects, meeting with diplomats and ambassadors from around the continent, and carrying on the proud tradition of creating fireworks that his own father had started.

Lady Ah-lam was good with fireworks too; she had a certain flair for taming the wildly unpredictable powders and chemicals into soft pastel sparkles that drifted down from the heavens like stardust after they reached the skies. One could identify which flares she had crafted in an instant. She took part in the same political matters as her husband, making sure to retain her elegant, ladylike appearance as she did so. Her quick wit and clever ways of arranging words had allowed her to take the advantage in debates more than once.

It was said that Jin and Ah-lam, together in their perfect union, were the greatest rulers that Gongmen City had ever known...but no one spoke hopefully of their legacy continuing into the next generation. For how could their bad color, bad omen of a son ever live up to their glory?...

Shen's eyes brimmed with bitter tears as he flung himself face-down atop his bed mat. If someone had given him the chance to have one of his wishes granted, he wouldn't have wished for a lot of friends and playmates or even for a healthy immune system, despite the fact that he desperately wanted both of those things. No, he would have wished for the ability to make his parents proud of him. Even though he wasn't even five years old yet, he was constantly dreaming of the day that he would do something so massive, so brain-boggling that his parents wouldn't be able to ignore him any longer. Then they would rush up and embrace him, and apologize for never being there before, and tell him that they loved him and that they were so very, very proud of him...

The soothsayer pried open the door to the bedroom a bit, peeking inside tentatively. "Little one…?" she tried.

"Go away," said Shen curtly.

"I will not," she responded, but she didn't sound angry. She made her way over to the bed and lowered herself down beside him, sighing. "Oh, Shen, I know you're lonely. Someday you will find some friends, I'm sure of it, and then you can have your party…"

"But I don't want the party so I can have friends," whispered Shen. "I want it so I can see Mama and Baba."

The reassurances that she had been composing in her head promptly died behind her lips. Her throat went dry. She had known from the beginning that one day, her chick would ask her why she was taking care of him instead of his parents…but she had prayed to the gods that it wouldn't be this soon.

"Um…" she started hesitantly. "Well…that's certainly an…_unusual_ request…"

"I just wanna meet them…" He looked at her with wide, heartbroken eyes that sent a needle of guild twisting into her chest. "I see them around the palace sometimes, but I know they never saw me before…"

"They've seen you before," the soothsayer assured him listlessly. "Once when you were a baby, you got very sick, and they came to see you…"

"But they never come see me _now_!" Shen grew increasingly distressed, not about to be placated by such an empty excuse. "Wh-what did I do wrong?"

"Nothing, baby…" She fought to keep the quiver out of her voice. After all, this was a situation that she could remedy. "If you want a birthday party with your parents, then I'll make sure that you get it," she promised, pulling him into her lap.

He brightened, his head feathers lifting. "Really?"

She kissed his forehead. "Yes."

"Thank you, Nana!" He snuggled into her, and she thought that the look of contentment on his face was worth going through any number of trials and tribulations, if it only meant that he would be happy. He was so rarely happy these days…

"You'll see, my little Shen. I'll make sure that this will be your best birthday yet."

…

"You want us to do _what_?"

Jin and Ah-lam gaped at the soothsayer as if she was requesting for them to fly to the moon. She exhaled roughly; why did they have to make such a big to-do about one simple request? "All I am asking is that you come to see your son on his fifth birthday tomorrow. We would be honored for even a few minutes of your presence…"

"His fifth birthday?" Jin exchanged a glance with his wife, and the soothsayer saw both peafowl mouth two silent words in unison: _two years_.

"My lord, my lady, will you listen to me for just one moment!" she insisted firmly. "You have a very precocious son, and he is well aware that you exist and that you're his parents. It hasn't escaped his notice that you've been avoiding him at every chance that you get. The child has been having a hard enough time trying to interact with other children; he doesn't need his own parents to be giving him the cold shoulder as well! Why is it so hard for you just to come visit him every once in a while?"

"You know why," said Jin quietly. "We…we can't allow ourselves to get attached to him, soothsayer. What other choice do we have?..."

Her nostrils flared. "If you truly believe that he is sure to perish by his seventh birthday, then perhaps you could relish the time that you have with him instead of distancing yourselves from the boy and bestowing all of your pain upon _him_!"

Ringing silence followed her words. Of course, that was nothing new. Trying to speak to her rulers and superiors had been an infuriating experience ever since she had become their son's nanny. It seemed to her that in every conversation, she would make a simple request, they would weasel around it for as long as they could, and then she would be driven into an outburst. And, of course, now came the part where they would refuse her wishes while looking like a couple of surly children and quietly send her away…

"All right," said Jin softly.

She blinked. "…wh-what?"

"All right," he repeated, clearing his throat to remove some of the trepidation from his voice. His wife was gripping his arm and looking less than sure, but she didn't refute him. "We'll stop by your quarters tomorrow and visit Sheng Li, though I cannot guarantee how long we will be able to stay…"

The soothsayer felt her face break into a wide smile of gratitude. "Oh, thank you, my lord!" she exclaimed. "You have no idea how much this means to me, really! Oh, Shen will be so happy when I tell him…I know he's missed you, he's always wanted to talk to you again…"

She bowed before the two peafowl, and there was genuine respect in the action for the first time in quite a while. Without waiting for another response from them, she hurried off. After all, she had much to do; Shen's birthday was tomorrow, and she had to obtain decorations, make preparations for a dinner feast, and ensure that their quarters were as tidy as possible in preparation for the arrival of his parents. She was humming slightly to herself as she hurried off. For once, she felt that she didn't need her bowl and powders in order to see that the future was bright.

In later years, she often reflected that this was the first of many mistakes that she would come to regret so deeply. If only she had looked into her bowl that day and seen what was to come just a little earlier…then everything might have been different.

…

In the morning, she dressed Shen in his finest silk robe, which was unfortunately the largest out of all of his clothes. She attempted to roll up his sleeves a little, but he was so squirmy and hyper that day that she soon gave up on trying to make the fabric stay in place. She brought in servants to help her hang lanterns from the ceiling and perfectly arrange china dishes on a decorated tablecloth, and her chick helped her where he could, although mostly he just ran in excited circles around her feet, chattering excitedly. It was a refreshing change of pace to see him with so much energy, to watch him behaving as most little boys are wont to do for once.

"When are Mama and Baba gonna come? Are they coming soon?" he chirped eagerly.

"Easy, my prince," she chuckled. "I'm not sure when they'll get here – they didn't tell me yesterday. But they'll come…"

The morning went by, and Shen ate his royal breakfast with gusto and acted out a strange scenario with his toys animatedly (from what she could gather, he seemed to be inventing a story about a strong, brave warrior peacock who could shoot fireballs out of his hands). The afternoon passed, his enthusiasm waned slightly, but he still managed to eat a fair-sized portion of his lunch. And then the evening began to crawl by…

The soothsayer sent numerous servants out to find where Jin and Ah-lam had gotten off to, but to no avail. She let Shen stay up nearly an hour later than his usual bedtime in the hopes that they might show up, even though she knew that her hopes were probably in vain. Finally, she was forced to say, "It's time to get ready for bed, my prince."

Shen didn't cry, but even without the tears he looked heartbreakingly miserable. He stood there sniffling while she scrubbed his face and pulled a nightshirt over his head. At last he whispered, "I didn't even get a birthday present."

"Oh, darling…" She fought to purge the catch from her voice. Her emotions were torn between empathy for her baby and fury at his parents for going back on their word. But for now, his parents weren't here. There had to be something she could do for him…

"W-why don't I tell you your fortune, dear?" she asked, a trifle shakily. "Would you like that?"

Shen lifted his eyes and head feathers only slightly. His nanny had never offered to tell his fortune before. He had asked her once or twice, but she had always told him that he shouldn't rely on predictions to tell him his actions – she still believed that, but looking into her bowl was the only way she could think of to cheer him up. Besides, how much could one little foretelling hurt?

"Would you really do that?" he said, a touch of incredulousness creeping into his tone.

"If you really want me to, perhaps I'll do it just this once."

"Please?"

It was already rather late for him to be awake, and she didn't want to get him into the habit of sleeping in, but she figured that she could make an exception on his birthday…especially when the rest of the day had been such a disappointment. So she retrieved her bowl and powders, seated herself cross-legged on the floor, and positioned him so that he was adjacent to her. Then she took his hand and carefully wormed out a single feather. She did it gently, not plucking harshly the way she usually did, but she saw him wince slightly nonetheless.

"Now, let's see what the future has in store for you, little one," she proclaimed as she placed the fuzzy little feather at the bottom of the bowl. She extravagantly tossed a handful of sparkling powder into the air…

White smoke drifted upwards placidly, condensing into the form of a peachick. Shen leaned forward, intrigued, his ruby eyes widening. The soothsayer watched as the smoky child stretched and grew, taking on the towering neck and long train of an adult peacock. But as it did, a disconcerting change fell over it…its coloration was turning from white to black, and its eyes were beginning to glow menacingly like two scarlet drops of blood.

"Nana…?" she heard Shen murmur softly. "What's…"

The black peacock raised its arms triumphantly, and flames spurted up around it, flickering and dancing – they were under its control. She heard a bird's screech of victory, which she knew would be inaudible to Shen. Soon enough, other sounds were pounding at her ears as a powerful vision overtook her. Fires crackled, people screamed…and there was something else, too, like the explosion of a firework setting off, but much more foreboding…

"NANA!"

The soothsayer blinked, and the nightmare world around her boiled and vanished. She was sprawled out on her back on the floor, and Shen was crouched by her side, shaking her frantically. Tears were gushing from his eyes, and he was screaming and sobbing hysterically. He must have seen her collapse and thought that she was hurt or unconscious or worse.

"Shh-shh-shhhhh…" she hushed him quickly, pushing herself back up. Her heart was pounding and she was slightly dizzy, but it was nothing that she couldn't fight through in order to comfort him. "Easy, love, easy…it's all right…" She pulled him into her arms, and he clung to her fearfully, as if he thought that she would evaporate.

"W-w-what happened?" he whimpered, hiccupping slightly. "H-how come you f-f-f-fell?"

"I had a vision…" She tightened her embrace. "But it's all right, that's happened to me before. I didn't see your future, though, baby. That happens too, sometimes, I don't see what it is that I was trying to see…"

But even as she sat there, rocking him and comforting him and coaxing him into sleep, she was utterly terrified. She couldn't like to herself – she had seen…_something_…in Shen's future. She had seen him quite literally turn dark, had felt a roiling insanity that seemed to be trapped within him, fueling his terrible actions. She feared for her chick, feared that he might turn into something else, something that was beyond his control.

And she would do all she could to change the future…but she couldn't help but think that it might already be too late…

* * *

_A/N - Yeah, I know this wasn't my best work. Sorry, I figured that something was better than nothing. Oh, and because I have many ongoing writing and art projects at the moment, please don't expect this story to be updated all that frequently. As I said before, though, I definitely want to finish it._

_And I also want to apologize for "threatening" my readers to stop updating unless they left reviews. As I said, this is my most reviewed story in terms of reviews per chapter, so I had no reason to complain. I know I've been gone for a long time, but I would greatly appreciate it if you would leave me a review to tell me if this chapter was everything you wanted and more or not. Please, thank you, and have a nice day._


	8. Making friends is hard to do

_A/N - Oh, boy...um...yeah, if you've read my older story "If No One Will Listen" then the next few chapters of this story are going to look very familiar to you. Sorry about that, I just felt that I had to do it this way. If you've never read "If No One Will Listen" then don't bother digging it up, because you're pretty much about to read it here. Trust me._

_On the plus side, this means fast updates for a little while!_

* * *

******White Hot Darkness**_  
_

_Part 8: Making friends is hard to do_

It took a while for Shen to get over the bitter disappointment of his parents breaking their word, but eventually, he got used to it. Time kept passing, and soon it was perfectly normal for him to know that his parents simply weren't going to give him a second glance. He accepted that as an unchangeable truth…even though he wasn't exactly happy about it.

But Shen wasn't utterly doomed to be alone forever. In fact, as the weather grew warmer, a significant event occurred: he found his first friend.

Nothing about that day seemed to deviate from the norm. It was a hot, humid morning in early summer; bees flounced about the last pollen of the flowers in the courtyard, and Shen was seated by the well, listlessly rolling his ball back and forth. The soothsayer, stood back a ways, watching him pretend to play.

"What's wrong, my prince?" she finally asked.

The ball rolled against the well and was caught up in a patch of rough grass. Shen didn't bother retrieving it.

"I have no friends," he declared unhappily.

The soothsayer sighed. "You will find some, dear heart."

"Nuh-uh," Shen couldn't help but contradict. "Everyone in the palace thinks I'm weird! Even the other kids from outside-a Gongmen call me 'bad color, bad omen'!" Shen hated to be called "bad color, bad omen." By now, he understood exactly what the phrase meant, and that for some reason the fact that he was white while his parents were blue was a foreshadowing of something terrible that would happen to the city. He wasn't even quite sure that he comprehended why being white was such a big deal, but it had long since been drilled into his head that he was wrong, wrong, wrong.

His nanny was still trying to be vainly optimistic. "Nevertheless, there must be someone who – "

"You don't get it!" Shen yelled, scrambling up, his still-developing head feathers bristling. The soothsayer flinched. "Nobody's ever gonna wanna play with me, Nana! Never EVER!"

She placed her hooves on his shoulders, catching his eyes pleadingly. "Shen, calm down…"

Shen tore away from her angrily, running across the courtyard. His progress was hindered by his enormous robes, and he looked altogether awkward and laughable, but his frustration was still clear. The soothsayer didn't even have the heart to go after him and reprimand him for his behavior; she understood his anger well enough. She settled down by the well, sadly watching the chick that was practically hers as he trundled through the flowers.

…

Once Shen saw that his Nana wasn't following him, he hitched up the long hem of his robe with hands masked by oversized sleeves and began stomping through the gardens of the courtyard. It was nearly deserted out here today; the only other people he saw were servants, pruning bushes or sweeping paths, and one lone wolf cub – one of the guard children. He always steered clear of the wolf pups. They usually snickered at him if he happened to pass by them, and he figured that they might decide to push him around if he tried talking to them. He was in no position to fight with children who were older, bigger, and stronger than him.

The puppy he saw was running around erratically – chasing something, by the look of it. Butterflies? No, bees! Shen rolled his eyes at the stupidity of the situation. Didn't the cub know that when you chased bees, you got STUNG?

He turned his attention back to the flowers, admiring the blue and red and purple blossoms and their vivid colors. He wondered if he would get in trouble if he tried to pick one. He would never pick the white flowers, though; anything that was white couldn't be as beautiful as things that had color. Anything that was white was a bad color, bad omen –

Something barreled into him.

Shen cried out, tumbling face first into the nearest flower bed. Sprawled out on top of him was a lithe, furry form that was much heavier than he was. He struggled to free himself, but he was completely pinned, and his weak body wasn't adequate to the task of escaping. Finally managing to lift his head a bit, he saw what had knocked him over: it was the crazy wolf cub.

The puppy shifted a bit, shook his head, opened his eyes…and then immediately scrambled up when he saw what he had run into. "Oh, um, um, I'm very sorry, um – my prince!" he flailed.

Painfully, Shen pulled himself to his feet (having a bit of trouble finding his feet inside his huge robe). "You…don't have to call me that," he muttered.

The wolf cub had now raised himself to all fours, and his eyes flitted back and forth in confusion. "Um…my lord…?" he tried again.

Shen bristled. "I'm not a lord and I never will be! I'm too…" He trailed off.

"…little?" the pup finished. "Oh, that's just cause'a your age! You'll get bigger!"

"No, I'm too…" Shen struggled to remember the word his parents always used. "Sick-ly. I'm too sick-ly."

The cub blinked in confusion. "Well, you look fine to me! You're just a different color!" He grinned, his bushy tail wagging. The few fangs in his mouth were quite blunt, and many of them were missing, creating spaces between his teeth. He couldn't have been much older than Shen. "I think your color is cool!"

Shen was thunderstruck. "Cool? But it's…wrong!"

"There's no wrong color," the cub responded. "They're all special in their own way."

Shen's feathers drooped a bit; that sounded an awful lot like something his Nana would say to make him feel better. "But…none of the other chicks look like me…"

"That just makes you cooler!"

He was secretly quite pleased by that, although all he said was, "I'm not cool, though. I don't have any friends."

The puppy shrugged. "Neither do I."

Shen's head feathers went up in curiosity.

The two boys settled down into sitting positions on the grass, almost without realizing it. "How come you don't have any friends?" Shen asked.

The little wolf cub didn't seem too bothered by not having friends, unlike Shen. "I don't go out much."

"How come? Are you sick-ly too?"

"No, Mama and Baba are palace guards. I gotta be trained to be a guard too."

"They should still let you go out! My mama and baba are the rulers of the city, and they still let me go out! But…" Shen looked down, drooping quite a bit, as always happened when his parents came up in conversation. "They don't have time for me…"

"Oh, that sucks," said the puppy brightly. "Mine don't have time for me either."

"Who takes care of you, then? Do you have a Nana?"

"No, I take care'a myself!" He stood up proudly, this time only on two legs, although Shen was soon to learn that he wasn't too fond of this position and was much more clumsy when he wasn't standing on all four feet.

"Oh," said Shen thoughtfully, then added, "I have a Nana!"

"The bearded lady?"

"Yeah!"

"Oh, I seen her before. Isn't she a soupsayer?"

"SOOTHsayer!"

"Oh." The cub's ears lowered a bit in embarrassment, and he grinned sheepishly. "Heh. I hearda those, too."

Shen got to his feet, straightening his baggy robe. "She's really smart," he declared. "She can see the future and she knows all kinds-a stuff!" He looked the other boy in the face and smiled, the last of his reservations dissolving. "Wanna come meet her?"

…

The soothsayer was just beginning to wonder where Shen had gotten off too when she saw the boys running towards her. She watched as her familiar little chick pointed at her, chattering happily to someone that she didn't recognize. One of the guard children, by the looks of it.

"Shen, who's this?" she asked, standing.

"Nana!" Shen ran up to her, his stride so adorably awkward in his giant clothes that she couldn't help but smile. "This is…uh…" He suddenly realized that he didn't even know the wolf cub's name.

"I'm Xun," the puppy offered, rising back to two legs from all fours.

"He's one'a the guard kids," Shen said.

The soothsayer was overjoyed beyond belief. A broad smile overtook her face. "You made a friend?"

Shen's eyes widened. "Huh? But we're not…" His voice faded.

Xun smiled, strode forward, and put his arm around the peachick's shoulders. "Yeah, he made a friend."

…

For the rest of the afternoon, Shen played a game with Xun that he had seen other children playing before, called "tag." It involved a lot of running and poking each other and then running the other way. Shen wasn't all that great at it, since he couldn't run fast for long before he started huffing and puffing, but Xun made sure to slow up for the scrawny chick.

Shen was having the time of his life. He wasn't lonely and bored anymore; he finally had someone who wanted to play with him and didn't think of him as a "bad color, bad omen." He couldn't have cared less about how tired he got; he was having _fun_.

As the sun began to set, Xun and Shen both flopped down on the grass, happily exhausted. "Boy," panted Xun, "that was fun."

"I know," wheezed Shen. "I never played tag before."

The wolf cub examined the sky thoughtfully. "It's gettin' late. Are your mama and baba gonna come get you soon?"

Shen shook his head. "No, but Nana will."

"Oh. I thought maybe your parents came'ta see you at night and put you'ta bed…"

He felt his heart constrict. "No. They never come see me."

"Shen?" the soothsayer was approaching them. "Bath time, my prince."

Shen made a face.

"I better go home." Xun scrambled up, showing his blunt fangs in a goofy grin. "Bye, Shen. Am I gonna see you tomorrow?"

"Uh-huh!" exclaimed the peacock chick enthusiastically.

"Shen!" the soothsayer called again, impatience budding in her voice.

Shen began to scurry away, but he looked back at his no friend one last time. "Tomorrow," he said firmly. "It's gonna be the best day ever!"

…

For once, Shen was in a good enough mood that he didn't throw a tantrum or try to run away while the soothsayer drew his bath, but it still wasn't any easier for his nanny to scrub him down.

"Oww," he whined as his bare tummy was scraped by hard bristles. "That hurts! Don't we have any OTHER brushes?"

The soothsayer sighed, replacing the brush on its shelf. "We have a sponge," she replied, "but you always complain that it tickles."

"Tickle is better than hurt!" he declared indignantly.

She rolled her eyes, dunking the sponge in the washbasin. "Now, hold still," she instructed, and set to work on his stomach again.

Almost immediately, Shen began giggling and squirming, sending up small splashes of water to spritz her. "Shen – !" she shouted as her glasses were splattered. "I said hold still!'

"It's not my fault!" he cried. "All our brushes suck!"

The soothsayer lifted her chick into a towel and bundled him up tightly. "It is not polite to say 'sucks,' Shen."

"Xun says it."

"Well, that's up to Xun's parents."

Shen felt a twinge at the mention of the word "parents," but he didn't say anything about it. That is, he didn't say anything about it until after he had been dressed in his oversized sleep robe, when his Nana was tucking him into bed. He wondered if Xun's parents were kissing him goodnight right now, if they did so every night.

"Nana?" he asked softly.

The soothsayer lovingly stroked his feathers as she pulled a quilt up to his chin. "Yes, my prince?"

"Do Mama and Baba love me?"

Her eyes widened. She hesitated noticeably. Then she quickly answered, "Of course they do."

"But why don't they ever come see me?"

She bit her lip. "Well…they are very busy."

"Xun's parents are busy, too, but they still make time for him…"

The soothsayer was lost for words. She had always known that this day that come; after all, Shen had already realized that his parents gave him an abnormally small amount of attention, and it was only a matter of time before he started asking why. And though she knew the real answer to his questions, it wasn't something that she could tell him. The truth was nothing that a five-year-old child could hear.

"They don't love me, do they?" Shen murmured.

"Yes, they DO," insisted the soothsayer.

He rolled over, turning his face away from her. She could tell that he didn't believe her.

She heaved a sigh, blowing out the candle on his night table. "Good night, baby. I love you."

She never did get a reply.

* * *

_A/N #2 - Thanks everyone for all the reviews last time, I really do appreciate it! Please keep reviewing!_


	9. We are broken

**White Hot Darkness**

_Part 9: We are broken_

The next morning's sky was heavy with damp gray clouds. Rain seemed impending. Shen hated rain; it meant that he had to stay inside, and his nanny acted as if a single drop would be poisonous to him. Maybe that was why he felt so glum when he woke up.

He tried to snap himself out of his melancholy. After all, he'd finally found a friend; he and Xun were going to play all day together; it was going to be the best day ever…

"You'd better get outside while it's still dry, darling," said the soothsayer as she dressed him. She smiled knowingly. "I wouldn't want you to miss out on spending time with your new friend."

Shen listlessly agreed, and soon enough he was back out in the courtyard. Xun was there, too, dashing among the flowers as he had been yesterday, chasing – what else? – bees.

"You know, you'll get stung if you do that," Shen pointed out once his Nana had let him go.

"Will not," replied Xun, barely glancing over at the chick. It wasn't out of spite, however; the puppy was simply too enraptured by his "prey" to look away. His ears and nose twitching furiously, he finally clamped his fuzzy paws around a bee – only to pull back with a shriek.

"OW!" Xun waved his stinging hand as if the pain would fly off of it.

"I told you!" declared Shen indignantly, crossing his arms.

By this point, Xun had begun to cry, as any young child that just got stung by a bee was apt to do. "Mamaaaa!" he wailed, tears rolling down his furry cheeks.

Soon enough, an armored she-wolf hurried out from behind the palace wall, looking alarmed. "Xun?" she exclaimed, running towards the two boys.

Shen stood back – the palace guards had always made him a bit nervous, even though he knew they wouldn't hurt him – and watched as Xun's mother scooped him up. "Chasing bees again!" she sighed. Her voice was gruff and growly, as were most wolves', but she sounded gentle and loving as she smoothed the fur of her still-crying son. "There there, dear…let me kiss it," she offered, tenderly brushing her lips against the sore spot on Xun's finger. He sniffled.

Shen's eyes were widening more and more as he watched Xun being given parental love. He felt a pang in his chest.

"We should put some medicine on that. You can play with your friend later." The wolf mother shifted Xun in her arms and headed off, not sparing Shen a glance. So she didn't see that the peachick's face was twisting, that there were tears flooding his eyes. Finally, he couldn't take it anymore and dashed out of the courtyard, sobbing.

The soothsayer's eyes widened when she saw her chick coming, bawling and so upset that he nearly tripped and fell several times. "Oh, no…baby, are you hurt? Are you sick?" she cried, kneeling down to pick him up.

"Waaaah…" For nearly a minute Shen could get out nothing but sobs. Then he managed, "M-Mama and Baba don't love meeeee…"

The soothsayer sighed, her heart wrenching. "This again, my prince?"

"You don't understand!" Shen was nearly screaming now, his voice holding more than a hint of hysteria. "Xun g-got h-h-hurt and his m-m-mama came right out and t-t-took c-c-c-care of him! M-my m-mama would NEVER do that!"

"If you were…" the soothsayer started, then stopped herself, her eyes narrowing. If Shen was what? He had been hurt, he had been sick, he had been on death's door, and yet that had hardly captured his parents' attention. Of course she knew why; of course she understood her lord and lady's decision, but she never had and never would agree with it, because she could see the consequences: what they had left their child with.

Every day, she had watched her bright and perceptive little chick wondering and hurting more and more. It was time to end this.

"All right. That is enough, my prince." She drew out a handkerchief and gently dabbed at Shen's tears. "We are going to see your parents…and you are going to stay there for a while."

Shen squirmed wildly, trying to escape from her arms. "No…nooooo!"

"I said enough." The soothsayer's voice was soft, but firm. "We're going now. I'll pack your things and bring them over later."

"Don't make me go, Nana!" sobbed Shen, who was quickly nearing incoherency. "They hate me!"

"Baby, they do not…"

Shen was not to be convinced, or placated. As his nanny brought him into the palace, he kicked and screamed and thrashed and beat his wings against her. On any other occasion, she would have harshly scolded him for such a tantrum, but right now she could tell that he was hardly aware of what he was doing. He was just desperately trying to get away – terrified of his own parents.

This had to be remedied.

When the soothsayer reached the throne room, Lord Jin was speaking to an important-looking official. She announced, "My lord, I need to talk to you."

Jin briefly eyed her in mild annoyance. "In a moment, soothsayer," he replied dismissively.

She flared, not about to take any nonsense from anyone, not even her lord and superior. "No. _Now_."

Jin's long eyebrows lifted. He dismissed the official and turned to her, holding himself sternly and thunderously. "What gives you the right to command me?" he demanded.

"This is not about me!" cried the soothsayer, holding out the panicked bundle in her arms a bit. "This is about your son!"

Jin sighed roughly. "If the child is sick again, you needn't be concerned about it, I'll send the healer…"

"The boy is indeed sick, my lord," she interrupted. "But not in the way you think."

"Oh, don't tell me you think he's got a deadly disease or some such nonsense…"

Her eyes narrowed to slits. "Would you even care if he did?"

Jin blinked. "Wha…of course I would! He's my son, you know I worry about his health! Especially given his…condition."

"Prove that to the boy, who is certain that you and Ah-lam hate him!" yelled the soothsayer.

"That we hate…why would he think such a thing?"

"You've seen him three times since he was born!"

"So?"

"He's _five_!"

"W-well, yes," Jin stammered, "but we do have an entire province to run. That's why we hired you to look after him…"

"The palace guards have an entire complex to protect," she answered, thinking of Xun, "but they still make time for their children."

"The palace guards?" Jin repeated. "Has he been playing with the guard children? Is THAT what this is all about?"

"It's about you not caring about your son!"

"Of course I care about my son! Granted, his…condition…makes it hard for us to take care of him, but that doesn't mean we don't love him…"

"His condition does make it hard sometimes," the soothsayer agreed, "but I manage."

"Yes, well, that's your only job…"

"I am not obligated to love this chick," she declared fiercely. "I do it of my own free will."

Jin's eyes were alight, and he responded just as fiercely, "Love is something you would never have to force me to feel for my own child."

Throughout all of this, Shen had been deathly, deathly quiet, although his nanny could feel him trembling against her. Now she tried to see what his reaction to his father's latest statement would be. "Shen, baby…?" she tried, gently setting him on his feet.

For a few seconds, Shen just stood there, shaking and staring at his father fearfully. He sniffled a bit. Then his teary ruby eyes narrowed in anguish…and anger.

"You're lying!" he yelled. "You're just saying that I'm a freak and I don't deserve to have anyone spend time on me! I bet if I was born normal, you would love me!"

And with that, he bolted from the room.

For several long moments, Lord Jin and the soothsayer simply stood where they were, staring at the door that Shen had fled out of. Neither could think of anything to say. Finally, the soothsayer shook her head at Jin and began to head out. There were tears in her eyes.

That was when Jin found his voice, as broken as it sounded. "I didn't…I never meant for it to get this far…"

She turned to look at him.

The lord took a deep breath and slowly moved down the stairs away from his throne. "O-of course it was a shock when he hatched prematurely…when he looked the way he did, b-but…that doesn't mean we don't…"

"…love him?" the soothsayer finished, her voice rising in hurt and anger. "What would make him believe that you love him? And for that matter, what would make ME believe it? You've shown that child nothing but neglect!"

"Soothsayer, please!" Jin begged. "You know why we couldn't bring ourselves to care for him…"

She set her lips into a hard line. "I thought I did, but now I'm wondering if you simply didn't care."

"You know why!" he repeated desperately. "We couldn't bring ourselves to become attached to Sheng Li because we didn't know how long he would live! We didn't…want…the pain…"

The soothsayer had to keep from snapping. "Pain is a part of life, my lord! You cannot avoid it! You had a duty to your son, and you disregarded it simply because you thought you could cheat the ways of life! Did you think I didn't know what you were asking me to do when I became his nanny? You wanted me to cope with the agony so that you didn't have to! You wanted ME to love him instead of you and Ah-lam!"

That was too much for Jin. He slowly sank down on the steps and began to quietly weep.

The soothsayer softened and tentatively approached him, unable to keep sympathy from breaking through her anger. She did not try to comfort him, but only because she knew he would be more embarrassed than placated. Instead, she stood beside him and waited for several minutes until he finally managed to choke back his sobs and return to their conversation.

"B-bring the boy back here," Jin gasped, his chest still heaving. "I must speak with him…"

She shook her head firmly, although she kept her voice reasonably gentle. "I will not force him to, my lord," she answered. "He was terrified of seeing you today; if it upsets him that greatly, I will not make him come here."

"Tell him that we do love him, if he will believe us…"

"I've already told him that," she sighed, "and he didn't believe me."

Jin haphazardly wiped his eyes. "Then bring him here, and we will tell him ourselves."

"Lord Jin, I already told you…"

"Please!" His hands were clasped tightly against his chest. "I…I am going to speak to my wife. We were wrong, soothsayer. We wanted to spare ourselves of the pain, and it hasn't worked at all. I must see my son…I must make it up to him…I…"

The soothsayer was torn. On one hand, she was ready to refuse, as his parents needed to see the consequences for their terrible decision. On the other hand, they already _were_ seeing the consequences by having to deal with their guilt and seeing Shen's anguished state, and she didn't want Shen to grow up thinking that his parents had never cared. That would be a miserable existence, she thought. Her baby didn't deserve that.

"Once he is ready, I will bring him," she finally submitted. "But he's too upset now, and…oh…I had better see where he got off to…" Her brow creased in worry. She stood up and trotted briskly to the door, throwing back a last glance at Jin, who was still seated dejectedly on the steps with his head down.

"Goodbye, my lord," she said with only a hint of curtness. "I will see you soon." And without another delay, she set off to find her chick.

…

A thunderstorm was moving in over Gongmen City. Promises of lightning loomed in the distance, and the air felt almost slimy. Rain beat down upon the courtyard of the Tower of the Sacred Flame, and upon its lone inhabitant, who was in a far corner, curled up into a miserable ball.

Shen hadn't stopped crying since running away from his father and nanny. He knew how much trouble he would be in when he was found at here, as someone with his CONDITION was never, ever supposed to go out in the rain, but he didn't care and he didn't feel guilty. He felt a lot of things – heartbroken, unloved, dejected, and probably getting a cold on top of all that – but he didn't feel guilty.

A mere few hours ago, his only desire had been to spend the day playing with his new friend, but now…he didn't know what he wanted. He wanted to go inside and be warm and dry; he wanted his Nana to assure him that everything would be all right, and she would know, because Nana knew everything; he wanted his parents, wanted them to love him and hug him and promise to start spending more time with him. He didn't know what to do, and that was why he simply lay sprawled out where he was, wailing into the cold air.

That was where the soothsayer found him.

"Sheng Li, you'll get sick!" she gasped as she hurried towards him.

Shen looked up at her through so many tears that his vision wavered. He whimpered, backing up further into the corner.

She sighed, scooping him up. "It's all right, baby," she said soothingly as she felt him recoil. "Nana's here…"

"Lemme go," Shen croaked weakly, then coughed.

"Oh no…you're sick…" The soothsayer pressed a hoof to his forehead, feeling for a fever.

"Don' care!" he sobbed, then collapsed against her in a trembling heap.

She wasn't sure if anything would help him besides reconciling with his parents, but Shen wasn't ready for that and neither were they. So instead of taking him back to his parents immediately, the soothsayer carried her chick back to their room. The last stages of his freak-out ceased as she drew a hot bath for him, and his cries became those of just a brokenhearted child, bringing tears to his nanny's eyes.

She gently peeled off his oversized robe, and bathed him quickly when she noticed coughs punctuating his sobs. If Shen really was getting sick from being out in the rain, the last thing he needed was to be wet right now. He didn't react to the bath, not wriggling or splashing, the tickle sponge not even bringing a twitch of a smile to his face. He just sat there desolately, crying.

The soothsayer lifted him into her arms, toweled him off, and dressed him in his nightshirt. She swaddled him tightly in a blanket and cradled him, but he seemed to be resisting any affection.

"Mama...Baba...hhhhate me..."

She pressed her forehead against Shen's, feeling hot tears track down her cheeks. "They don't, baby…they don't…"

Her poor little chick was shaking so much that he could barely take a breath. "'M sorry...didn' mean to...didn' mean...!"

"Shen, baby, it isn't your fault…" the soothsayer whispered desperately.

Shen's head bobbed, but whether he was nodding or simply trembling she couldn't tell. "Bbbbbad..." he choked out. "Was bbbbbad..."

She was quite literally lost. She only wished that his parents could see this, see what they had done. Perhaps they had only neglected him because they didn't want the pain that would come from his short life expectancy, but this was what they had left their child with.

She didn't give him a chance to protest as she cradled the chick that was practically hers in her lap, rubbing his back as his breakdown showed no sign of stopping.

"M'sorree…m'sorreeeee…" Shen was endlessly repeating. All at once, he seemed to be crying harder, aching for something that he had never known. "I want my mamaaaaa…"

The soothsayer had no idea what to do anymore. "B-baby, you're going to overheat…" she stammered. The little body leaning against her already felt red-hot with fever.

Shen didn't seem to hear her. He partially crawled from her lap as much as he could, being as weak and exhausted as he was at this point, and looked around wildly as if he had lost something. "Mama…Baba…m'sorry…come back!" he cried, reaching into the air.

She clutched at her chest in horror. Was something wrong with her chick's SANITY?

Shen couldn't even sob anymore, and he was too drained of energy to protest as he was gently grabbed and lain down. His now-sniffling nanny laid beside him, her hoof making loving circles on his tummy, which was sore from so much crying. He shivered inside his blankets, occasionally dozing off but never really sleeping, every so often mumbling out desperate pleas for his parents and apologies.

The soothsayer didn't sleep at all. All she could do was lay awake and worry about her child all night.

…

The following morning, Shen could do nothing but lay sprawled out on his bed, still exhausted, still feverish, and still miserable.

"Oh baby, you're sick again," said the soothsayer when she saw he was alert, immediately moving a hoof over his forehead.

"Don' care," answered Shen dully.

She sighed, and for a while nothing else was said; she brought him cool compresses, which didn't make his fever go down, and made him a cup of warm milk that he could barely stomach. Then she held him in her lap and rocked him, keeping her arms around him, and he was too starved for love not to bury into her.

Several minutes had passed before she realized that he was crying again.

"What did I do?" Shen sobbed quietly, his face buried into her layered robes. "W-why don't Mama and Baba love me?"

"They do, baby," murmured the soothsayer, stroking his feathers tenderly. "Your father was in tears when he thought you hated him."

"But why don't they ever come see me?" Shen cried.

"They…" She sighed, knowing that the moment of truth had come; she couldn't hide this from him anymore. "They don't want to get attached to you because…" She shut her eyes remorsefully. "Your life expectancy supposedly doesn't exceed your seventh birthday…"

Shen's bloodshot eyes widened as he processed this. His expression of utter horror expanded over a period of several seconds. But really, what other reaction could there be from a five-year-old boy being told that he has less than two years to live?

"B-but…" Shen whispered, "I thought I was gonna grow up…a-and…"

"You ARE," said the soothsayer firmly, keeping her arms wrapped tightly around his waist.

Shen's little face screwed up. "It's not FAIR!" he screamed.

She flinched.

"I don' wanna be sick! I don' wanna die!" Shen wailed, his shoulders heaving as he began to sob once more. "I wanna have a Mama and Baba just like everyone else!"

"Y-you won't die, my prince," his nanny stammered.

"You just said I would!" he shrieked.

"That is what the doctors predicted – but to hell with them and their logic – " The soothsayer had to keep from snarling, clutching her baby tighter, her eyes burning with determined fire. "They are not a soothsayer!"

Shen swallowed his tears and paused, considering this. He had always known that his Nana was smart. Not only did she know all kinds of things, but she could see the future as well. The doctors didn't really know what would happen in the future. Only Nana did…

"When you look in your bowl, do you see me grown up?" he asked softly.

"I do," she replied.

Shen's head feathers lifted the barest increment, as he was a bit intrigued by this notion of his future self. "What am I doing?"

The image of a shadowy peacock with fire in its hands briefly flashed into her mind, but all she said was, "I do not have my bowl with me, child…"

"Then how do you know you see me in it?"

The soothsayer chuckled, kissing his forehead gently. "I look in it often."

Shen was silent for another minute or so as he appeared to be considering this. Finally he said, "Nana, could you please get me a glass of water?"

"Of course, my prince."

It seemed to Shen that his nanny took an eternity to leave to fulfill that simple request. She had to tuck him in, adjust his pillows, and throw another quilt over him before she was convinced that he would be comfortable for the few minutes that she was gone. He was used to getting this kind of treatment when he was sick, and it was one of the things that irritated him the most, but today he didn't roll his eyes or whine about it. He just lay there, trying to conserve his strength. He was going to need it.

Finally, the soothsayer left the room, and Shen stood up. That particular task was easier said than done; he was so dizzy that his head wobbled, and his legs felt weak and shaky. He managed to make it out of their living quarters walking; after that, he was forced to crawl just so that he wouldn't faint. Knowing that sooner or later his Nana would find him and reprimand him for this, he dragged himself up several flights of stairs with one destination in mind – the throne room.


	10. Heal

**White Hot Darkness**

_Part 10: Heal_

Lord Jin and Lady Ah-lam were both indescribably distraught. At least Jin could think somewhat clearly today, though; his wife was a wreck. She had been half-crying for the greater part of the morning, cursing herself and her neglect towards their son. Jin was hard-pressed to calm her. At last, he told her as gently as he could to go to their room and lie down; he had a meeting with an ambassador coming up soon, although politics were currently the last thing on his mind.

He was sitting slumped on his throne, deep in thought after dismissing an attendant, when he heard the sound of tiny talons clicking against the polished floor.

Jin's head swiveled sharply, and sure enough, there was Shen.

The lord's breath caught in his throat. His son looked terrible – his eyes were bloodshot, his feathers ruffled, and it was clear just by looking at him that he hadn't slept all night. He was shaking from fatigue as well as fear, and all in all seemed to be just barely holding himself upright.

"S…son?" Jin blinked. "What's wrong? A-are you sick?"

Shen gazed at his father with large, pain-filled eyes that gradually brimmed with tears, and he looked down. "N-n-Nana says that when she looks in her bowl, she sees me grown up…so I'm not gonna die…so you can love me now, right?..."

Jin was absolutely floored. There was no emotion that could describe how heartbroken he was at hearing those words.

"Sheng…L…come here…"

Nervously, Shen shuffled forward, his face twisting as he tried to keep in further tears. Jin hesitantly reached down and scooped up the child, holding the feverish little body close. He brushed the chick's head with his long feathered fingers.

He was holding his son. Five years, and now he was really holding his son for the first time.

He lowered himself on to the throne, keeping Shen cradled in his lap. Shen sniffled, raising his arm to suck on the baggy sleeve of his robe. This was a self-pacifying habit that the soothsayer was trying to break him of, the same sort of thing as thumb-sucking, but Jin didn't know that. All he knew was that the simple little action reminded him so much more that this little boy was barely older than a toddler.

"Baba…" Shen whimpered.

"I'm here," murmured Jin tearfully, rubbing his son's back. Shen coughed, his temperature seeming to escalate a couple of degrees in only a second, but he buried into his father as if trying to absorb this rare moment of affection.

Jin softened, growing a bit calmer. "You're sick, son," he said, and instructed a nearby servant to bring him a cool compress.

Shen coughed again. "I was out in the rain yesterday," he admitted, head feathers back.

Jin's heart sank. "W-what?"

"I was sad…'n I thought nobody loved me…so I ran outside in the rain…"

"But the rain!" exclaimed Jin in alarm. "Your condition!"

Shen sniffled, his eyes brimming with tears again at the mention of that word. "Didn' care…"

Jin said nothing, only closed his eyes and continued to hold his son. It was his fault that the child was sick now. If only he hadn't been so arrogant yesterday…

"Do you still hate me, Baba?" Shen asked in a quavering voice.

"I NEVER did…" Jin made his embrace tighter.

"P-promise?"

"I absolutely, truly promise…"

Shen burrowed into his father's arms, his eyes shutting weakly. He was exhausted and felt awful, especially after coming all the way here. But emotionally, his heart had lifted a bit. For the first time since yesterday, he didn't want to cry.

He sank into a half-doze, only really registering a few sensations and sounds that jumped out at him: the touch of a cool cloth against his forehead, the occasional muttering of his father to the servants, the sound of footsteps approaching the throne…

"Sh-Sheng Li?"

With some effort, Shen opened his eyes. His mother was standing over him.

"Mama?"

"Sheng Li, what are you doing here?" Ah-lam stammered.

"I came to tell you that Nana saw me grown up in her bowl," said Shen, his voice faint with sleep, "so I'm not gonna die…so maybe you can love me now…"

Ah-lam gripped at her chest, tears spilling over her cheeks.

"Do you hate me, Mama?" asked Shen softly.

"No…never…!" she sobbed out, burying her face in her wings.

"I had a bad dream…I was looking for you…and you left..."

Shen's eyes had fallen shut again, but there was no mistaking the feeling of his body shifting as his father stood and handed him to Ah-lam. His mother cradled him lovingly, smoothing his feathers, and Shen happily snuggled into her at the touch. He was smiling now. "Mmm…Mama…"

She smiled tearfully, rocking her chick. Half a second later, he was asleep.

Jin wrapped his wing around his wife's shoulders, and they stood there as a family, all together at long last. But the moment could only last until he had an uncomfortable realization.

"Um…does the soothsayer know he's here?"

Both elder peacocks listened. After a few minutes, a desperate clatter of hoofs could be heard outside, along with a cry of, "SHEEEEEEN!"

They couldn't do much more besides look at each other.

The soothsayer burst into the throne room, nearly flattening several attendants as she shoved the doors aside. "Lord Jin!" she gasped. "I cannot find - !"

"Peace, soothsayer," said Jin, glad to hear that there was at least calm resonating in his own voice. "We have him…"

The soothsayer released a shaky breath. Sure enough, she could see Shen now, contentedly curled up in his mother's arms and emitting soft, gentle baby snores.

Ah-lam shook her head. "Do you mean to tell me that he actually came all the way here by himself?" she asked in bewilderment.

"And so sick, too!" exclaimed the soothsayer, a hoof to her heart. "Oh, that chick is lucky he's too sick for me to take the switch to him - !"

"He wanted to tell us that…" Jin swallowed. "That you said he wasn't going to die, so it was okay for us to love him now…"

She sighed. "I…am not surprised," she admitted. "After last night…"

Jin braced himself to hear the worst. "What had he done?"

"I was beginning to think he was losing his mind…"

He swallowed hard.

"He screamed and sobbed for you, reaching out for you as if you were there…demanded to know what he'd done wrong, why you didn't love him…begged for you both to come back as if you had just left the room…"

Jin breathed out a half-sob, recollecting how poorly Shen had looked when he had first approached them. "He said something about a bad dream…I never…"

The soothsayer was finding it increasingly hard to stay angry with her lord and lady. After all, she thought, there was no such thing as an unforgivable crime if the person was sorry, and Jin and Ah-lam were just about as sorry as it was possible to be. And they had not only seen the error of their ways, but also begun to repair some of the damage they had done by showing their son love. Shen was sleeping peacefully now, because of them.

"He can stay here for as long as he wants," Jin declared, then cleared his throat to get rid of the quiver in his voice. "We will take care of him…"

The soothsayer smiled. "He needs to be with you for…a while. He needs time with you and his mother." She pursed her lips, a bit unsure about suggesting this, but she knew it was the best thing. "I have been looking to visit relatives outside of Gongmen," she began cautiously, "and perhaps now is the time…"

Jin seemed uncertain about this. All he said was, "The boy isn't going to like it. He's never been apart from you."

"Which I must remedy." She sighed. "As much as I care about him, I know that it isn't healthy for him to depend on me being there every second of every day. It's best to have him understand this at a young age. It is best that I leave now, while he is sleeping…please tell him that I'll be back in a week."

"You're not even going to say goodbye?"

"He would never let me leave and everything would be ruined if he was awake to see me go…"

Jin hesitated, but nodded. "Whatever you feel is best," he said. "Take your leave; it is well deserved. Ah-lam and I will take good care of Sheng Li…"

She smiled again. "That I don't doubt. Goodbye, my lord. I will see you soon."

"Farewell for now, soothsayer," Jin replied.

The soothsayer approached Shen, who hadn't budged an inch during this entire conversation. My poor tired baby, she thought lovingly. Ah-lam crouched down so that she could give her chick a kiss on the forehead and whisper, "I'll see you later, my dear." He hardly even stirred.

…

Shen was so exhausted that his not-so-little nap lasted for nearly four and a half hours. At some point, he surfaced briefly and realized that he was in bed, but this knowledge had barely dawned on him when he was out again. Finally, in the middle of the afternoon, he managed to open his eyes.

For a long time, he wasn't sure where he was. Somewhere in the palace, definitely, but he had never been in this room before. It was nearly as lavish as the throne room, but much more spacious than the quarters where he lived with Nana. He himself was lying on what appeared to be sheets hewn of silk, on the fluffiest pillow he had ever felt in his life. But where was he?

He stayed where he was for several minutes, blinking sleepily, until his father peeked into the room to check on him. Upon seeing that the peachick was awake, Lord Jin smiled and went to sit by the edge of the bed.

"Morning," he said gently.

Shen yawned. "It's morning?" he mumbled.

"Just an expression, child," answered Jin, still smiling. He reached over to stroke his son's head feathers, and Shen nuzzled contentedly against the touch. "How are you feeling?"

Shen shrugged. He was still pretty dizzy as he tried to sit up, but he could definitely feel that his fever had gone down, if it hadn't broken completely. "Better."

He realized now that he must be in his parents' quarters; the royal chambers. He looked around again with wide and no longer red-rimmed eyes. Everything here was so fancy and beautiful, and yet here he was, wrinkling priceless sheets and sprawled out in his oversized and very plain sleep robe. Despite being the prince, he had never been here before; he supposed his parents hadn't wanted a bad omen in their room. He almost drooped at this thought before following it up with the fact that he was in here now – probably brought by his parents themselves, not Nana.

On that note – where WAS Nana?

"Looking for something?" asked Jin.

"Nana hasn't come to get me?" Shen said cautiously.

"Um…yes…" Jin looked down, rubbing a bit at the back of his neck. "She, um…has gone away."

"She LEFT me?" cried Shen, mortified. Losing his Nana was his greatest fear. Sometimes he even had nightmares about her packing up and leaving in front of him, never to return.

"Easy, son." Jin placed his hands on Shen's shoulders and squeezed reassuringly. "She has gone to visit some relatives outside of Gongmen. She'll be back in a week."

Shen breathed out, slightly calmed. At least Nana wasn't gone forever. But a week was still a long time; at least, to a five-year-old it was. "Who's gonna take care of me, though?"

"Your mother and I," responded Jin, smiling again.

"But…aren't you busy?"

"Not too busy for my son."

Shen sniffed doubtfully. They always had been before…

Jin reached down and lifted up the boy's chin so that they locked eyes. "Not too busy for my son," he repeated, more firmly this time.

Shen considered this, thinking about all of the things he had contemplated over the past few days – things that parents were supposed to do with their children. If his parents were really going to take care of him, then maybe they would be willing to act like they were a real family. "Are you gonna play with me?" he asked.

"Yes," promised Jin.

"Can you tuck me in and say goodnight when I go to bed?"

He pulled the child into his lap, cradling him lovingly. "Yes."

"When I get better, can we go on a picnic?"

"A picnic? That sounds like a wonderful idea."

Shen immediately brightened at the prospect of a picnic. "I'm better!" he declared, hopping out of bed immediately. Unfortunately, he wasn't as better as he wanted to be, because he was soon reeling from dizziness.

Jin gently scooped him back up and laid him down again. "Not yet you aren't," he contradicted gently. "Sleep, son."

"But I already went to sleep!" Shen complained.

"Yes, but I've heard you didn't sleep very well last night. You need to get some rest."

"Fiiiine," Shen reluctantly submitted, but he climbed into his father's lap instead of staying in the bed. He didn't know why, but he felt a lot better just knowing that someone who cared was near him – it just seemed to be what he needed after dealing with last night's major emotional trauma.

Jin didn't mind his son's clinginess one bit. If anything, it reassured him that Shen wasn't angry or frightened of him and Ah-lam anymore. He sat there contentedly and smoothed his son's white feathers. White wasn't such a bad color after all, he thought. In fact, when Shen was so peaceful-looking like he was now, the white seemed to be almost beautiful, radiating purity and happiness.

"Baba?" Shen spoke up just before falling asleep again.

"What is it, son?"

"Do you love me?"

"More than anything…"

"Does Mama love me?"

"Yes, very much."

"You wouldn't ever wanna get rid of me because I'm not normal, right?"

Jin barely restrained a gasp at this, and immediately wrapped his son up in a tight hug. "Never…never…never!..." he exclaimed.

Shen yawned sleepily, seemingly satisfied. "I love you, Baba…don' ever leave me…" he mumbled, and dropped back into slumber.

…

This nap only lasted about an hour, though; after that, Shen once again awakened, this time to find his mother there. "Look, Sheng Li, I've brought you a set of dominoes," she said, showing him a small wooden box filled with elaborate tiles. Shen was delighted, although he couldn't seem to stop getting his mother to address him by his full name.

That sick day was one of the best that he could remember. Besides not feeling too poorly after sleeping so much, one or both of his parents was always around to keep him entertained. They told him stories, played games with him, and made him his favorite foods for dinner (although he didn't have much of an appetite). He was almost sad when it was time for him to go to bed for real, until he remembered that he had another week to spend with his parents.

It turned out that there was another small bedroom in his parents' quarters, which had been intended for Shen until he was signed off to the soothsayer. The servants had made up a bed mat for him in here. It was still done up in pastel colors and fluffy shapes, though, decorated for the baby that it had never gotten to see.

Shen had the pleasure of both his mother and father tucking him in that night, but in an unfamiliar room and in the aftermath of a breakdown, he was afraid of being alone and almost cried until Ah-lam agreed to sit with him while he fell asleep. He clung to his mother's robes while she sang him lilting lullabies, until his eyes finally closed and he fell asleep, feeling comforted and loved.

The night did not pass without incident, however.

At some point during the night – or really, very early the next morning – Shen woke up in his strange bed feeling…funny. All foggy and light-headed. He didn't like it at all, and with quite a bit of difficulty, he crawled out of his room and into his parents' bedchamber, where he blearily nudged his mother until she awakened.

"Hmm? Wha…?" Ah-lam sat up groggily, seeing her chick crouched by the side of the bed and seemingly half-asleep. "What is it, my dear?"

"Mama, I feel funny," Shen mumbled.

She lifted a wing to his forehead. "You have a fever again." She frowned, glancing over at her husband, but he was still heavily asleep and snoring. With a sigh, she said, "It doesn't feel too bad; I don't think we need to get the healer. For now, Sheng Li, dear, why don't you sleep with Mama and Baba? We'll make you feel better…"

"Kay," he muttered, and tried to crawl into bed, but his arms gave out and he fell flat on his face. Ah-lam scooped him up and tucked him in beside her; he instinctively snuggled into her, reassured at feeling his parents nearby. Even though he really didn't feel any better, he was calmer now that he wasn't alone, and fell asleep again.

About two hours later, both Jin and Ah-lam were awakened by a heart-wrenching sound: their son crying.

Shen was laying sprawled out in bed, hardly able to move, sobbing quietly. Even a brush of contact against him was enough to register that he was burning up with fever. "Baby? Baby, what's wrong?" cried Ah-lam.

"D-d-d-don'…f-f-feel…g-g-g-good…" Shen choked out.

The lord and lady exchanged a glance. Shen was sick all the time, and seemed to have gotten fairly used to it; if he was crying about not feeling well, then something might be majorly wrong.

Jin quickly got up and headed off to find the healer, while Ah-lam held her chick close and murmured, "All right…it's okay, Mama's here…calm down, Sheng Li, you'll make yourself even more feverish…"

Several minutes had passed in this manner when Shen suddenly jerked in her arms. "Mama? Mama?" he cried out.

"I'm here," said Ah-lam soothingly, rubbing his back, but he didn't seem to hear her.

"Mama!" Shen called desperately, writhing against her. "Mama…no…m'sorry…please come back!..."

Ah-lam's eyes widened in alarm and horror. "Sheng Li, darling, I'm right here!"

"I soreeeeee!" Shen wailed, collapsing against her in a limp, broken heap. "Mama…come back!"

Mortified, she kept him enveloped in her arms, trying to reassure him that she was there, but he neither heard her nor sensed her presence. The poor thing was overheating himself, bawling until he was nearly too hot to hold, but his mother didn't dare put him down. It seemed like an eternity before Jin finally returned to the room with their preferred healer for Shen, Lady Biming, in tow.

"Where is the child?" was the first thing she asked when she entered the room, and her green eyes shone with concern when Ah-lam tearfully gestured to him. "Poor baby…what's wrong, my prince?" she asked, kneeling down to the chick's level, smoothing his feathers back.

Shen didn't respond to the touch, only wailed incoherently. A few muddled "m'sorry"s were audible in the mix.

"He keeps begging for me to come back, but I haven't left!" Ah-lam sobbed. "Doesn't he realize I'm here?"

"He's burning up with fever, milady," Biming responded. "I think he's hallucinating. But don't worry, we'll soon set him straight."

For the next hour, Biming worked steadily, gently inserting acupuncture needles into her patient and having him gulp down the occasional herb or elixir. She also made sure that he drank plenty of water, so that he wouldn't become dehydrated from the fever and the crying. Shen's sobs grew quieter and weaker, and eventually stopped altogether. Finally, he opened his eyes and appeared to see the room around him.

"M-Mama?" he croaked, looking up at her.

Ah-lam sobbed and clutched to him. Shen looked vaguely confused.

"Whazzgoinon?" he asked groggily.

"You…" Lord Jin groped for words. "You had a bad dream, son."

"Oh." Shen curled into his parents and shut his eyes.

Biming smiled. "That will be all, darling. Go back to sleep."

Shen was out before she even had a chance to finish saying so.


	11. Promises to keep

**White Hot Darkness**

_Part 11: Promises to keep_

The entire family slept in much later than normal the following morning – _over_slept, in the case of Lord Jin and Lady Ah-lam. When an attendant finally came to their room to see what was keeping them, they had missed one early meeting with an official and were already perilously late to another. Jin was the one who got up and hurried to this latest appointment, leaving his wife to sleep with the baby.

Ah-lam awakened late in the morning, but Shen didn't even show signs of life until early in the afternoon. He had had a very emotionally traumatizing couple of days, which had left him exhausted and still shaken from the ordeal. But he was on the verge of healing. After five long years, his parents were finally giving him the love that they had withheld; they had decided to trust their court soothsayer when she said that Shen would survive to adulthood. In fact, they felt foolish for not ever consulting her on the matter before.

Shen was listless that day; he didn't feel energetic enough to play and still slept a great deal. His parents brought him food, but he would only take one or two bites before complaining that his stomach hurt too much for him to eat. After his meltdown last night, his parents were of course extremely concerned, but Lady Biming came to give him a checkup later in the day and said that it was nothing to worry about. "Just give him time to rest," she said, "and he'll be fine."

But in fact, Shen wasn't fine until the next day.

After a not-nearly-as-stressful night (although Shen did refuse to go back to his room, clinging to his parents and crying when they told him it was time for bed), he was still oddly vacant and tired-looking the following morning. In between trying to balance their royal duties, Jin and Ah-lam were debating whether or not to call the healer again when they were confronted by an unusual visitor.

At a bit after noon, there was a knock on the door to their quarters. A servant opened it to reveal…a scruffy wolf cub.

"Um, h-h-hi," the puppy stammered. "S…somebody told me that Shen was here?"

The servant distastefully eyed this little furball, who looked as if he had been prancing through the mud left by the recent rains. "Prince Sheng Li is ill," he announced grimly. "He is not taking visitors right now."

"Please! Just for a minute!" the cub begged.

"Who's at the door?" Jin approached the servant, looking down in curiosity and a bit of disgust when he noticed the child standing there, his tail and ears twitching in nervousness. "Who are you?"

"Ummm…my name is Xun," the pup managed. "I'm Shen's friend. I haven't seen him in a couple'a days and I wanted to know if he's okay…"

Jin paused for a moment, thinking this over. "Wait here," he instructed, and disappeared back into his quarters.

A few minutes later, he reemerged, looking slightly bewildered. "Come in," he told Xun. "But make sure you wipe your feet!"

…

Shen had been laying in his parents' bed, sinking in and out of a half-doze, when he heard his father ask, "Son?"

"Yes, Baba?" Shen yawned.

"Do you know anyone named Xun?"

The effect was immediate. All at once, Shen looked more energetic than he had in days. No, more than that; he was _elated_. "Xun!" he exclaimed excitedly. "Is he here? Is he?"

"Uh, yes," answered Jin, more than a little taken aback by son's enthusiasm. "He's waiting outside…do you feel well enough to see him?"

"Yes!" Shen shouted, with the broadest smile his father had ever seen on such a tiny face. "Yes, yes, yes!"

Shen was thrumming with happiness as his father led Xun into the royal quarters. The puppy was wide-eyed as he gazed at all of the opulence around him; the guardhouse must have been extremely humble compared to this lavishness. But when he saw his friend, he grinned, revealing those familiar blunt fangs. "Shen!"

"Xun!" Shen's head feathers lifted happily as he sat up as best he could. "You came to see me!" He could hardly believe it.

"Course I came'ta see ya." Xun sat cross-legged on the floor beside the bed, still with that goofy grin on his face. "You were gone for a really long time, and I didn' know where you were. Mama and Baba told me that you were with your parents, so I figured, it was wortha shot to try and come see ya…"

"I'm glad you did." Shen was simply beaming. "I thought you'd forget about me…"

"I would never forget about you! We're friends!" Xun scampered up to all fours, his tail wagging happily. "Besides, you need someone to talk to ya while you're sick!"

Shen giggled. "Yeah."

"So, what're you doin' with your Mama and Baba anyway? I thought you said they didn't have time for you."

"They didn't…but…" Shen heaved a sigh and began to explain.

It was hard for him. Not only was he too young to truly understand everything that had happened to him, but he felt pain just talking about the distressing events of the past few days. It was like there was a big bruise on the inside of his chest, one that was starting to heal now but still hurt whenever he thought about it. Even upbeat Xun had lowered his ears by the time the story was finished.

"M'sorry about all that happenin' to you, Shen," the puppy said sadly.

Shen shrugged. "S'okay. It doesn't have anythin' to do with you."

"So, your Mama and Baba are bein' nicer to you now? You're bein' like a family?"

Shen nodded vigorously, brightening a bit. "Uh huh! They play with me and tuck me in at night and take care of me…Baba says that once I get better, we're all gonna go on a picnic!"

"A picnic? Cool!" Xun grinned again, showing his rounded-off puppy teeth. "Can I come?"

"Lemme ask. BABA!" called Shen, so loudly that he broke off into a coughing fit.

Jin hurried into the room, thumped his son on the back until he stopped coughing, and finally responded, "Yes, Shen?"

"Can Xun come on our picnic?"

Jin looked at the scruffy cub, recalled how concerned he had been about Shen and how excited Shen had been to see him, and had to submit with a sigh and a small smile.

"I'll see what I can do."

…

For the next few days, Shen gradually rested and recovered, being entertained by his parents and by Xun's frequent visits. Eventually, his cough retreated back into the dark corner of his lungs where it always seemed to wait to pounce on him, and he stopped running fevers. He was able to get out of bed and play slightly more active games when Xun came.

Jin and Ah-lam could tell that their son had a bad case of cabin fever after being kept inside for so long, but they didn't want him to go outside – not yet, anyway. They were waiting for the right moment to usher him out and show him…his surprise.

Finally, one day at around lunchtime, Jin approached his son as casually as he could and said, "Why don't we go outside for a while?"

"YEAH!" Shen cheered, practically running circles around his father. He had built up a lot of nervous energy over the day; Xun hadn't come to visit yet, and his parents had been popping in and out for some reason, so he'd been bored out of his mind. He tugged at Jin's robes, urging him to go faster and faster as they headed to the courtyard; the lord couldn't help but chuckle at this. Of course, knowing what he knew would happen when they reached their destination was also putting a large smile on his face.

The weather was absolutely brilliant that day, showing no evidence of the rain that had been turning everything into mud earlier in the week. The sun was high and bright, there wasn't a cloud in the sky, and the flowers seemed to be in their glory, splashing the courtyard with a hundred shades of red and yellow and blue…and white. Shen happily trotted past his father as best he could in his oversized robes, elated to be out of pajamas and breathing in the fresh air for the first time in what felt like forever to him…which was when he spotted something unusual in the middle of the manicured lawn.

It was a picnic! Or rather, it was THE picnic, the one that he had been fantasizing about since his father had told him that it was a good idea to have one. There was a worn but colorful quilt spread out over the grass to sit on, lots of delicious-looking foods stacked high on porcelain dishes, and standing nearby with a knowing smile on her face and her usual wise glint in her eye was…

"NANA!" screamed Shen in delight, running towards her as fast as he could.

The soothsayer smiled, kneeling down so that she could envelope her chick in her arms. "It's good to see you again, my prince," she chuckled, and she made a point of kissing his forehead and tickling his tummy until he giggled to her satisfaction. "Have you been good for your mama and baba?"

"Oh, he's been no trouble at all," answered Jin, smiling as he approached the site of the picnic.

"I missed you, Nana," said Shen, not letting go of his hold on her robes.

"I missed you too, baby," she responded, ruffling his head feathers lovingly, "but I'm glad to see that you seem to have had fun with your parents."

The soothsayer wasn't the only person waiting at the picnic; Ah-lam was also there, as well as Xun and his family. The wolf guards were muttering something about "first day off in ten years, and it's just because of the prince," but Xun was, if possible, even more ecstatic than Shen. Of course, Xun had a naturally hyper disposition anyway.

The picnic was a complete success, especially considering that it was Shen's first outing in a week. He and Xun played tag and playfully wrestled each other among the flowers, despite the calls of their parents not to roughhouse so much. The soothsayer discussed in great detail with Jin and Ah-lam the events that had occurred while she was gone. Though the notion of Shen hallucinating with fever worried her, she was pleased to see that he had bonded with his parents very well and not caused any major trouble. Hopefully, this would be the start of a beautiful new relationship.

But there was a problem still. Lord Jin and Lady Ah-lam had enjoyed the week with their son very much; they no longer felt guilty about neglecting him and didn't fear that he wouldn't live until adulthood (after all, the soothsayer had never led them astray before). But that didn't change the fact that they were still very busy with running Gongmen City. The week had been hectic for them as they struggled to both give their sick son the attention that he needed and attend to their duties.

"I'm not sure what we'll do," Jin told the soothsayer quietly, glancing nervously at Shen to make sure that the peachick was unaware of the conversation. "Of course we don't want to go back to ignoring him, but we simply cannot be there twenty four seven…"

"I never thought you would be," the soothsayer said gently. "Of course I knew that I wouldn't stop being his nanny anytime soon. And for that matter, I wouldn't stop being his nanny even if you ordered me to." She chuckled.

"You've done a wonderful job taking care of him," Jin said. "And he's very attached to you, of course. But he's enjoyed having us around, as well, and we want to be there for him…"

"Then that is what you shall do," she declared. "Be there for him when he needs you. There are many of us around to help with the child's upbringing; you will never have to feel like it is all up to you."

Jin smiled.

…

Shen was back near the patch of flowers where he had first met Xun just over a week ago, the place where all of this had started. He was bobbing the blossoms on their stems with his little hands, once again admiring all the colors: red, purple, blue, yellow, green…and then those pesky white ones were thrown into the mix.

He sighed. It seemed that all of his problems had been solved but one. He had found a friend, his parents had proven that they loved him, his Nana was back, and he wasn't sick anymore – but he was still white when he shouldn't have been. He was still wrong, wrong, wrong. He was still a bad color, bad omen.

He wondered if the white flowers ever felt like he did: like they didn't belong, trapped in a world of color that always outshone them, everyone passing them by simply because they were different. Despite the picnic and everything being resolved, Shen couldn't help but to still feel left out – overlooked by the world.

The other flowers were pretty, though. He wondered if he could pick some to make bouquets for his parents and Nana.

"Baba, am I allowed to pick these flowers?" he called, turning towards the quilt spread with the remains of their lunch.

"Of course you are, son," Jin called back, standing up and making his way over. "But what on earth do you need them for?"

"For presents," Shen explained, beginning to pluck the stems and making three matching little piles. Each one had a red flower, a purple flower, a blue flower, a yellow flower, and a green flower…

"You aren't picking any of the white ones," Jin noted with confusion, halting his son in mid-pluck. "Why is that?"

Shen scowled, his head feathers lowering bitterly. "White means bad color, bad omen."

Jin was rather jolted at this, though he was careful not to show it. "No it doesn't…"

"Yes it does! Everyone says so!"

"White can be just as beautiful as the other colors, Shen." Jin knelt down and gently removed a single white blossom from the mass of plants. "If you think about it, it's even MORE beautiful. White is the color that stands for purity, innocence, and perfection."

"But what if somethin' isn't supposed to be white, and it is?" demanded Shen. "What if there's a white flower, and all the other flowers have color and are much prettier? Doesn't that make the white flower a bad color, bad omen?"

Jin lowered the blossom into his son's hands. He knew that they weren't talking about flowers anymore.

"Maybe the white flower is different," he stated. "But that doesn't make it bad. The white flower could prove itself to be outstanding; it could be the best flower of them all. All it would have to do is try, and stop thinking that it's bad because of something silly like a color. I bet that if that flower really wanted to, why, it could be the greatest ruler that the city has ever known…"

Shen wanted to cry again, but this time from happiness. In this roundabout way, he had gained his father's acceptance, something that he'd thought he would never see.

Without warning, Shen threw his arms around his father (or at least, as far as they would reach). Jin was slightly taken aback at first, but after not very long at all, he returned the embrace.

"I love you, Baba," murmured Shen, sniffling.

"I love you too, son…" Jin took a deep breath. "Shen, I think there's something you should know. As much as your mother and I have enjoyed having you this week…well, we really are very busy, and we can't look after you all the time…"

Shen drooped immediately, sniffling more. "Does…does that mean things are just gonna go back to the way they were?"

"No," Jin promised firmly. "All it means is that Nana will still be the one taking care of you. But we won't ignore you. We'll come visit you as often as we can, or you can come visit us, and whenever you need us, we'll be there."

Shen clutched his white flower, hastily wiping away the tears that had gathered on his sleeve. "P-promise?"

Jin embraced his son, nuzzling him affectionately, and said, "I absolutely, truly promise."

…

But of course, things don't always work out as planned. More often than not, promises become meaningless and forgotten…


End file.
